


case #0180610

by Handful_of_Silence



Series: Good Omens/The Magnus Archives [4]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A lot of spiders, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asexual Character, Body Horror, Buried Alive, Canon-Typical Horrors, Canon-Typical Spider Excess, Canonically Ace Archivist, Declarations Of Love, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, M/M, Series 4 Spoilers, Spiders, Web!Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-04-24 08:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19169845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: Original recording of related attacks on the Magnus Institute, London, and on A. Z. Fell and Co's bookshop, Soho, 10th June 2018Or: Peter Lukas is going to stop the Watcher's Crown whatever the cost.





	1. initial account

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Considering that this is 100% going to get jossed as soon as the mid-series hiatus is finished, let's assume that this is even more an AU than it was already. 
> 
> While this takes place after Episode 138, there are rampant spoilers for Series 4 up to 140.

[CLICK]

DAISY  
[ _out of breath_ ] ….came through – through the tunnels, out of _nowhere._ [ _running, shoes slapping on concrete floor_ ] Where's... where's....?

BASIRA  
There – there - I see...!

DAISY  
Bloody hell! Jon!

[ _a shout of pain, a feral roar_ ]

The knife! Hand me the knife!

BASIRA  
You shouldn't...

DAISY  
I'm not fighting them with my bloody hands, am I? Give it -

[ _the sound of sprinting, a lunging jump. A struggle. An inhuman screech, violently cut off_ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _pained_ ] I... I think you got him.

BASIRA  
C'mon, there might be more.

DAISY  
Can you stand?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Y-yeah. I'll manage. [ _a groan_ ]

DAISY  
Take my... that's it, up you get.

BASIRA  
We should get to one of the inner offices. Or the overflow room. Somewhere we can properly defend.

DAISY  
How did they get in – the institute's supposed to be protected!

BASIRA  
We'll cross that bridge when we...

THE ARCHIVIST  
Where's... Where's Melanie? Has anyone...

[ _a vicious yell, nearby. The aggressive sound of something being hit repeatedly_ ]

BASIRA  
.... I think she's fine. Melanie? Melanie! Over here!

MELANIE  
[ _getting closer, breathing hard_ ] Anyone know what the hell's going on?

DAISY  
No clue.

BASIRA  
Right. We don't know how many more there are, so let's retreat. We got everyone?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Martin. We haven't got Martin.

MELANIE  
Not much of a surprise. Probably got out, or holed up with Lukas. Bet his stupid bloody disappearing act works on them.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _viciously_ ] Melanie.

MELANIE  
It's true!

BASIRA  
Look, there isn't _time...._

THE ARCHIVIST  
We should find Lukas.

MELANIE  
What?!

DAISY  
Are you bloody mental?!

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _doggedly_ ] He's the only one with the power to fend them off!

BASIRA  
You tried being any use yourself, Jon?

MELANIE  
Yeah, give it a go. Try talking them to death. Compel them to tell you about their holiday plans in Majorca?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _bitingly_ ] It's the _Hunt_ , it's not like they're much up for a light of light conversation.

MELANIE  
Well excuse me for...

BASIRA  
Stop it. Both of you.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Well, what do you suggest then, Basira?

BASIRA  
Lukas has protected the Institute in the past. I think it's best... [ _cut off by a thumping run, getting closer, a loudening growl_ ]

DAISY  
Fuck me!

MELANIE  
Christ!

THE ARCHIVIST  
Out! Run!

[ _fumbling static, the discordant jumble of people shouting_ ]

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

DAISY  
Bloody... buggering, ow! Would you be bloody more careful?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _testily_ ] You could hold a little bit more still.

DAISY  
I wish you could just know how to dress a wound by using your creepy powers.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Wouldn't that be nice. Now hold still... wrapping the elbow's a tricky bit.

DAISY  
[ _wincing, trying to make light in the circumstances_ ] Bet we won't even... [ _gasp_ ]... get a bonus for surviving this.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Not likely.... There. Best I can do.

DAISY  
[ _sarcastically, bit shaky_ ] Delightful. Melanie...?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Wanted to skirt the perimeter, make sure Lukas hadn't missed any. Think she needed to cool off.

DAISY  
I kind of hoped she'd tear Lukas a new one for dropping his guard.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Hmm. Would that life were so kind. Probably a bad idea. We know what he does to people he doesn't like.

DAISY  
You mean... [ _makes a cartoonish 'poof' noise, like a magician's vanishing act_ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _flatly_ ] Poof.

DAISY  
You know what I mean!

THE ARCHIVIST  
Hm. Anyway, Basira's with her. [ _gives a half-sigh_ ] There's still the question of course as to why the Hunt suddenly decided to attack. And you're right, Lukas was... was well within his power to intercede earlier. But it's been – [ _lets out a heavy breath_ ] it's been one of those days, and we should really...

[ _The door creaks open_ ]

PETER  
Ah. Jon. Daisy. Jon, I was wondering if I might have a word.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I really don't think...

PETER  
Ms Tonner can see that she gets some rest after today's' exertions.

DAISY  
I...

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _softly_ ] It's alright. I'll – I'll catch up with you all later.

DAISY  
I – [ _still doubtful_ ] Sure.

[ _The door closes and clicks shut._ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
What do you _want_?

PETER  
[ _A tutting sound_ ] So aggressive, Archivist. And when I've done nothing but save your lives today.

THE ARCHIVIST  
You expect a thank you.

PETER  
It wouldn't hurt. But, no, what I'd really like now is to talk. In private.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Daisy's not listening in at the doors, if that's what you're implying.

PETER  
I mean the tape.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _uncertainly_ ] You want it....

PETER  
Off. If you don't mind.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I really don't think that would be...

PETER  
It's about Martin, Jon. I don't want prying eyes listening in.

THE ARCHIVIST  
What about Martin?

PETER  
Needs your help. You do want to help him, don't you?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _cuttingly_ ] That's rather a transparent play, even for you.

PETER  
Even so. Shall we talk?

THE ARCHIVIST  
…..

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

AZIRAPHALE  
:... You don't mind if I record this, do you?

SIMON FAIRCHILD  
I do rather. I'd hoped this would be a flying visit.

AZIRAPHALE  
You must forgive me. One gets into these little habits, especially when confronted with such infamous acquaintances.

SIMON FAIRCHILD  
You flatter me.

AZIRAPHALE  
Not at all. One hears things. Now, how can I help – ?

[ _A choked gurgle, the sound of rushing wind_ ]

SIMON FAIRCHILD  
That's better. A bit of peace and quiet. Hard to concentrate in the freefall, isn't it? Don't want you peeking, the surprise will be spoiled. I think you'll enjoy what comes after. A bit more peace and quiet. You studious types, you like that.

[ _The jangling ring of the shop bell, footsteps_ ]

UNNAMED FAIRCHILD  
You want...?

SIMON FAIRCHILD  
Into the car. We'll drop him off at the Institute. Lukas has plans.

UNNAMED FAIRCHILD  
When does he not?

SIMON FAIRCHILD  
Long as it gets Beholding out of the way, it's not my concern. You head off. I'll tie up loose ends here.

[ _a shuffling_ ]

First things first....

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _Slamming, frantic, muted through a door_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _muffled, his voice ringed with static, difficult to make out his words_ ] Don't... don't do it... don't listen... don't listen to him Jon!

[ _Slamming continues faintly over the following conversation_ ]

PETER  
It has to be your choice, Archivist. We don't take the unwilling.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _coldly_ ] No fun otherwise.

PETER  
Something like that.

MARTIN  
Jon! Put it down, listen, put it down, whatever he's telling, you don't... _please_ , Jon...

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _steadying himself_ ] What's one more to the collection, right? [ _a tense pause and then a wrenching, slicing sound_ ]

[ _A half-swallowed yell_ ]

[CLICK]

 

* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

[ _the sounds of staggered running_ ]

MARTIN  
:... shit, shit, shit... oh God [ _panting_ ] Th-they'll be able to help, they'll know what to do, they'll be able... [ _almost sobbing_ ] Shit, shit, what have I done...

[ _continued sound of running, a tight struggling to breathe_ ]

They'll know what to do, they have to...

[ _The far off sound of something crackling, a roar of flames_ ]

Jesus, what the – ?

CROWLEY  
[ _distantly_ ] Aziraphale! Aziraphale!

MARTIN  
Crowley? What the – Jesus – Crowley, don't go – get out of there! I can't get you... it's too hot, Crowley, get out of there!

CROWLEY  
Aziraphale! For heaven's sake, where are you?

[ _a panicked groan of uncertainty, and then running. The sound of the fire gets louder, and Crowley gets closer_ ]

MARTIN  
Crowley, come on, it's going to – [ _crash in the distance_ ] The building's going to collapse, come on!

CROWLEY  
Get _off_ me – Aziraphale! Aziraphale! [ _coughing, beginning to hack_ ]

MARTIN  
He's not in here, Crowley, he's not in here [ _beginning to cough_ ] Don't... don't, it's not important Crowley, bloody hell, leave it, leave it...

CROWLEY  
[ _coughing, choking_ ] Gotcha.

MARTIN  
Now out, out.

[ _The scattered sound of the tape recorder being jolted. The fire gets quieter. The coughing continues_ ]

MARTIN  
Here, here, breathe just breathe, oh – bloody – look, some-someone will have called the fire brigade, someone...

CROWLEY  
[ _still choked with smoke_ ] Martin? Wh-what are you doing here? What the hell's going on?

MARTIN  
It's Peter. It's.... Crowley I need your help, please. Aziraphale, he's not... he's not here, he's caught up in all this, and I need, Crowley, he's got them both, he's got Jon.

CROWLEY  
[ _dazedly_ ] The... the tape.

MARTIN  
Bring it with you. We'll go back to mine, yeah.

CROWLEY  
Aziraphale- his shop. He'll... god, how can I tell him his shop's gone?

MARTIN  
Crowley, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but there's no, there isn't time, Aziraphale's in danger, they both are, please, I can't do this on my own.

CROWLEY  
[ _a little out of it, slightly lost_ ] I … Right. Yeah. Sure. Where are we going....?

MARTIN  
Back to mine. You can listen to the tape there, I mean if the fire didn't melt it. And I-I'll explain, I'll explain everything.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _a commotion_ ]

MARTIN  
…. Crow –

CROWLEY  
I'll kill him, I'll [ _a chittering, creaking awful quality in his voice_ ] **I'll rend his bones from flesh and encase his corpse in web for the rest of my brethren to feast on, how dare he...**

MARTIN  
[ _panicking, clearly terrified_ ] Crowley, please, please, I need you to stay in control ok, please, I-I can't do this... There's things you don't – you don't know...

CROWLEY  
[ _the chittering sound tones down, an echo remains_ ] What do you know?

MARTIN  
I-I'll explain everything, just.... Just sit down, I'll... I'll just. The kettle's boiled. Let me get the tea.

CROWLEY  
There isn't time for...

MARTIN  
[ _snapping_ ] Well _I_ need it. I'm... I've not exactly been here for a while, now wait unless you want me face-planting on the bloody carpet. [ _A jostling_ ] And great! Just great! Of course these stupid things are back, where's the sodding off-sw....

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

MARTIN  
… I'm sorry I don't have any biscuits. Haven't been back to my flat in a while, gone a bit stale.

CROWLEY  
I don't give a d – [ _stops himself_ ] It's... No worries, Martin.

MARTIN  
[ _The juddering sound of the recorder being moved_ ] I'll just set this here.

CROWLEY  
I think it's a bit late for a statement, Martin.

MARTIN  
[ _defensively_ ] Jon would want this recorded. F-for when he – he gets back.

CROWLEY  
I – Sure. Knock yourself out. [ _A dull pause_ ] Are you...? You ok?

MARTIN  
[ _clearing his throat_ ] I – er, I mean, I'm... no not really... [ _voice thickens_ ]. It was Peter. It was Peter, and I _knew_ I couldn't trust him, I knew it, it was – so _stupid_ , God I was such an idiot a-and now he's got Jon, and he's probably got Aziraphale too, and I – I, god, I thought – he was supposed to be safe, it was _supposed_ to make them safe....

CROWLEY  
[ _interrupting, annoyed_ ] Martin, you aren't making any sense. I can't... I'm not a bloody mind reader, explain it to me. Tell me what happened. Why the avatar of the Lonely has apparently moved against the Eye, why I just watched Aziraphale's shop _burn_ , [ _voice regaining that chittering echo, wavering_ ] **tell me whose throat I need to..**.

MARTIN  
[ _a choked, terrified sound_ ]

CROWLEY  
Shit... God, I'm sorry Martin. I-I'll calm down. I. I am finding it – difficult to be human at the moment.

MARTIN  
… 's fine.

CROWLEY  
[ _tentatively_ ] Sorry... sorry about all the legs for a second there.

MARTIN  
[ _a few octaves higher_ ] 's fine.

CROWLEY  
Please. Can you – What happened?

MARTIN  
[ _clearing throat again_ ] I. Um. Yeah. I'll start at the beginning.

CROWLEY  
Wherever's best.

MARTIN  
Well, um, I haven't seen you in a while. Haven't seen anyone in a while, really. It... it's not been great. I don't know if Aziraphale ever told you – I came round a couple of times, just for someone to talk to. You were out on some business, I think. Basically, Jon was... Jon stopped the Unknowing. But he... he was in a coma. For six months, his body entirely dead but his brain just wouldn't stop, but that wasn't a promise we'd ever get him back. And while he was gone... it was... it was bad. Tim and Daisy were gone, and Elias wasn't there any more, and no-one thought Jon would wake up. A-and then the institute was _attacked_ the Flesh, and if it hadn't been for... [ _trying to collect himself_ ] God, Jon would be telling me to stick to the story. Telling me how messy my statement was, to get to the point, how I was like all those quacks we get, trying to sell us their two-bit shitty ghost story. Ok. So. T-the thing is, Elias appointed an interim director, to oversee the Archives while he was away. Man called Peter Lukas.

CROWLEY  
[ _makes a dissatisfied noise_ ]

MARTIN  
You-You've heard of him then.

CROWLEY  
Reputation only. We try to avoid other avatars if possible, your Archivist excluded.

MARTIN  
Well, he's the director now. A-and, well, he's been working on.... Look, don't laugh, alright. I don't think you're going to believe me.

CROWLEY  
It's been one of those days. Try me.

MARTIN  
There's.... we, I mean Peter, think there's going to be an emergency of a new fear. A fifteenth.

CROWLEY  
[ _beat_ ]... You're fucking with me.

MARTIN  
I wish. A-and well, look, it's not as important now, what's important is that I-I've been trying to _stop_ it and Peter needed someone – an archivist, but you know, not, _the_ archivist, right – someone touched by the Eye, someone... [ _bitterly_ ] amenable to the Lonely. A-and Crowley, you have to believe me, there was _no-one_ , and we'd been attacked, the Institute was vulnerable a-and Tim and Daisy were _dead_ and Jon- Jon wasn't waking up, and Peter said, he _promised_ they'd be safe if I... and I didn't... I couldn't... [ _sniffling_ ] It doesn't matter now anyway, why I did it. I said I'd help him, I'd let Forsaken claim me, I'd promise to stay away from the Archives, from – from Jon, so long as everyone was _safe_. [ _sniffs again, trying to compose himself, voice thick_ ] Only it turns out that he was just another liar and I was just too... _stupid_ to see it. I didn't even suspect until it was too – The thing is, Peter wasn't lying about the Extinction. That was true. But the whole cosying up to Elias, taking over the Institute... taking me. He doesn't care about the Extinction, or at least, that's not his main goal. I think... I think he wants to stop the Watcher's Crown.

CROWLEY  
[ _a gentle scoff_ ]... Martin... The Beholding isn't going to do a ritual, they've never...

MARTIN  
No. You're right. They've never. And don't you see, that's made all the other Powers nervous. Especially if you've got avatars of the Eye going around, sticking their nose in, messing up other people's rituals, clearing the way. I think it's why Elias never did anything to stop the Extinction. He hoped he'd be able to enact his own ritual first.

CROWLEY  
And Lukas...

MARTIN  
Peter's convinced that, even with Elias indisposed, the Eye's moving to do a ritual. That with an Archivist coming into power, it's inevitable. So he though it would be better if the major powers of Beholding were out of the picture. The ritual can't happen if the players aren't in play. Elias can't do anything in prison. So that left Jon. And, I suppose, Aziraphale.

CROWLEY  
But Aziraphale... he's not. He's not on their side – He's not working for the Eye.

MARTIN  
I don't think that matters, not to Peter. He's one of the Eye's agents, [ _Crowley makes a sound to interrupt_ ] that's how it appears, r-regardless of his true motivation. And you're both proactive in disrupting the manifestations of the other powers, so the logic goes. If Peter didn't want to avoid getting any other powers involved, he'd have probably gone after you too.

CROWLEY  
And you helped him. You helped Peter Lukas do this.

MARTIN  
No – no! Of course not! How can you say –

CROWLEY  
Only you know quite a lot about all this, Martin, for someone....

MARTIN  
[ _suddenly blisteringly, furious_ ] I found out when Peter Lukas set the Hunt on the Institute, alright! I found out when I had to watch my friends nearly die, _again_ , when I couldn't... I couldn't get through the fog to help them, I couldn't reach them, Lukas made damn sure of that. He only interceded after his point had been made. And then he went, and he told Jon everything, about how the Hunt was a demonstration, a warning of how vulnerable we were, how he'd kindly asked Simon Fairchild to take care of that bothersome agent in Soho. And I still, t-the door was locked and my hands went through it like smoke, and Jon couldn't see me, couldn't hear me, and I couldn't get the fog to.... A-and then Peter told Jon that if he didn't go with him, if he didn't cede his claim to the Crown, he'd let them take the Archives. That it didn't have to be all bad, they could come to some kind of arrangement that everyone was happy with. And then Jon looked at him, and he was so full of fury, and he asked Peter what the hell the Lonely could offer that he could possibly want. And Peter, he laughed, because of course he did, and then he said that... that the Lonely needed a sacrifice, needed feeding, but it didn't have to be me. That it would be better for both of them if the Archivist was taken out of the picture, and that surely that was a fair exchange. Beholding could have me back and Forsaken could have the Archivist, and wouldn't he want that, to see me safe. And Jon – [ _slightly hysterical_ ] of course, of course, he bloody took it because that's the type of _stupid stupid idiot_ he is – and when he's not throwing himself into – I don't know, bloody, people-eating coffins or letting some horrific golem-man take his sodding ribs out – he agreed, just said yes in that quiet way like his own life – like it meant nothing to him, and I never wanted that, I would never have ... [ _swallows a sob_ ]

CROWLEY  
[ _softer, awkwardly_ ] Martin. I'm sorry. I didn't – I know you wouldn't. D-did he say anything else? About Aziraphale? That was Simon Fairchild on the recording, I know it was, but what's he to do with it all?

MARTIN  
[ _composing himself_ ] If he got a few hunters into the Archives on the promise of a chase, I guess he told the Fairchilds he was making a play for the Eye, and they wanted in?

CROWLEY  
And Aziraphale - has he trapped him in the Vast, is he falling?

MARTIN  
He said something about putting him somewhere he couldn't interfere. That he might be useful to keep, in case...

CROWLEY  
What?

MARTIN  
In case you came round, causing trouble. 'Good collateral against the Web' he said.

CROWLEY  
[ _a sharp coldness_ ]... I see.

MARTIN  
I mean, th-that means he's not dead, right? That's something.

CROWLEY  
It has to be. [ _beat_ ] So, what happened? To Jon? Is he...?

MARTIN  
I don't _know_. Peter gave him – this knife, and I thought – I thought he was going to stab himself with it, and I _tried_ to get inside, I did, but the door was locked, and I wasn't... They weren't listening to me, or they couldn't hear me and the fog was so thick I could barely... And Jon took the knife. And t-there were these things around him. Like... like you know that candyfloss you get at funfairs? I went with my dad once, before, well, before... And it was all around Jon. Wispy, stretched out like sinews. And Peter – I could barely hear him through the _buzzing_ in my ears – I heard him explain to Jon that they were his... connections, if you like. How he was anchored to the world. Each one a person he knew, someone you see on the same bus as you who shows up as a flimsy whisper of a line, or a work colleague, or s-someone you love, a thick tendril trailing outwards. And he told Jon he'd – he'd been unspooling mine for months now, thread by thread, getting me – getting me ready. That he couldn't afford to be that gentle with Jon, that there wasn't time to do it gradually. And then Jon – god, he looked at me, right at me, he _saw_ me, and it's been so long, since I was there, since I was present, since I was _seen_ , and he gave me a look – he looked so sorry, so tired – and then he gathered those few lines of candyfloss and h-he had the knife, and he just – severed them. Like shearing corn. And he – it hurt him. I remember I was surprised, and then I was angry at himself, because of course it did, it always does. And Peter just... just smiled, told him what a good job he'd done, how perfect he'd be for Forsaken, how it would savour him, such a _treat_ for his empty god. Then the fog swept in, and static got louder.... and Jon – I couldn't see him any more. By that time, Melanie had heard me shouting, and when we got the door open, they, well, they were gone.

CROWLEY  
Maybe Aziraphale... Maybe he's with him. Wherever they are.

MARTIN  
Yeah [ _sighs_ ] yeah. A-and I don't know what to do, Crowley. I don't know how I can fix this.

CROWLEY  
[ _cautiously_ ] Me and Aziraphale, we... we've not exactly been out to make friends. Not like the Powers are much in the business of making friends. More like momentarily beneficial alliances. But... the Eye has allies. Allies that could help us get them back. I – I have an idea. But I don't know if you'll like it. It's not... it's not _safe_. I can't... I don't think I can protect you, if it doesn't work. A-and if you survive, I can't promise you'll be the same person as you were.

MARTIN  
Is there any other way?

CROWLEY  
Not that I can think of.

MARTIN  
Then tell me.

[CLICK]

* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _a shush of tide, distant_ ]

[ _shuffling sounds, indeterminate_ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _flat, dry-throated_ ] Oh. Hello. I guess Lukas missed you, huh. Or maybe he left you behind. Wanted you to witness what happens next, I suppose.

[ _voice echoing, like he's in somewhere cavernous_ ]

I should really save the tape.

[ _another long silence_ ]

I hope they're all safe. I wish I could know that. I wish... Martin, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for – for a lot of things. But I'm sorry I left you. Guess it won't be the first time.

[CLICK]


	2. supplemental material #1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supplementary material regarding the absence of the Archivist, and speculation on the whereabouts of the being known as Aziraphale. Attached to case file #0180610.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end chapter notes. Tags have also been modified accordingly.

[CLICK]

THE ARCHIVIST  
Hello? Can anyone – hello?

[ _rough jolting, the recording is disrupted intermittently by a whine of static, cutting off some of the sound_ ]

… course there isn't. Foolish idea.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

[ _muttering to himself_ ]....I mean – if I can walk around, if all this is still here, there must – there must be a door somewhere – It's not like I'm _nowhere_. Right, let's just, get this open.... [ _grunting with effort_ ] oh for christ's... .̷̯́̌͊̅.̴̫̰̻̦̤̑͆̒̒.̶͚͎̣̻̊̎.̷̲̟͌.̷̝͙̪̜͉͖̓̏́̂̕

[CLICK]  


* * *

  
[CLICK]

...H-hey, Basira? Shit – Basira! Stop, will you just... it's – Can you hear me? It's --- _shit._

…

Hello?

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

So I can't get out of here. Shouldn't be surprising really. Right. Calm down. Take stock. [ _a pause, some breathing sounds heard over the crackly recording_ ] Ok, firstly, wherever Lukas has taken me, I haven't left the Archives. I can walk around the entire place, I can interact with objects, so I'm not a _ghost_ , which [ _annoyed sigh_ ] should probably be a relief. I've listened back, and I think this place is effecting the recording. Static build-up, perhaps. The building hasn't changed but I hadn't expected it to, that's more a mark of the Spiral, but it's nice to have it confirmed. I simply can't open the front doors. And... well, I don't think there's anything outside. I can't see any people for a start, and you'd expect to see passers-by, commuters, and the like.

I think... I think if I got outside, it wouldn't be London. Not – not my London at any rate. [ _a huff of air_ ] So, there's that. And then the fact that everyone's... ,̷̬̭̅̇̅̌.̴̬͖͖͓̬͇͑̈́̾,̶̧͙͍̐̈́̐̔.̷̧̰͉̪̦̻͘.̵̬͎͍̂̾͛̉̎͝,̵̡̺͔̳̈́̆̽͜͝

…. can see them walking around, doing their regular jobs, or whatever they usually end up doing. I can't hear them. Their mouths move but there's a dead silence like a dropped call whenever I try and listen. I tried to get Basira to notice me, but... it was like I wasn't there. Which, I'm not, I realise. But, ha, 'guess it's not much more different than before. I've always been very good at pushing people away. Even before I became... whatever I'm becoming.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

Daisy's sleeping in the storeroom again. Her and Basira, they're getting on... getting on well. Better than before. Th-that's nice. They both need someone.

Melanie's got a hidey-hole down in the tunnels somewhere. I hope she's not too cold.

It's freezing here.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

I wandered all the shelves today. All the files are ones I already know, I've already read a dozen or so times but even ,̵͙̬̫́͒͌͗.̵̨̫͚͇̬͆̈ͅ,̶̧̞̜̩͖͗̄̌̅̐̔.̵̲͒̇̇̈́͒̋.̵̼̐,̴̧̛̛̲̮͕̈̉͒̕.̶͍̓͒̄͗͝"̸̡̧̰͍͈̙͋̇̑̚̚͝"̴̘̣̆͂̓̍"̶̼͉̭̖̄̄ .. slips when I try to focus. Words waver like they're underwater, and if I could only _concentrate_ maybe I could....

There's a fog, outside the front doors, instead of the street I have come to expect. It's thick, like a heavy mist rolled in from the sea.

I haven't been sleeping.

….

I should rest.

....

[CLICK]  


* * *

  
[CLICK]

I found some of Martin's fire extinguishers in a box today. Wondered why the box was so heavy, took a look inside, and there they were, left over from Jane Prentiss' interest in the Archives.

It was a good idea. I don't – I don't think I ever told him that.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

The fog's coated the entirety of the reception. I can't see any of the staff. I sometimes catch a flash of Khaled's boisterous ties, or the clack of Frankie's heels. But it's muffled, and I cannot be sure I am not simply inventing sound to make up for its absence.

I should... It would be safer to stick to the Archives.

[CLICK]  


* * *

[CLICK]

[ _a distorted, staticky silence_ ]

…...  
......

......

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

[ _parched, weary_ ] I don't think anyone will find this. Elias might hear it of course, but he's not exactly in any position to help, even if he might deign to. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed, of course. But it's... it's not like I imagined it. I don't know what I ,̷̧͓̻̿̅̃̉̏.̷̛̙͆̂̃̚,̶̡̝̝̗̦̫͌͂̂.̸̦͖̉̈́̎̈.̴̧͓̤̜̻̞̓̓,̶̪͍̈́͒̇̆͌̑.̵͓͋͛͊̈́͠"̵̹̥̼̎́̊͛ͅ"̶̘̾"̶̺͑̾̋͊̄.̵̡̨͇̲̊̇.̴̙̗̤̰̩̆̃̔̌͜.̸̡͉͌̿͝ ... be a mercy really. Lukas, he had a point. The Watcher's Crown can't happen if – if I waste away. If I die here. I don't... I don't know how it'll happen. I don't need to eat, or drink here. Everything feels more muted. Like I'm hearing it underwater. It's... It's a nowhere life, an existence of a sort if one were being kind. I – I don't think it will be like the other times I've... I've come close. It won't be painful. I won't fight it. I don't even think I'll care when it finally happens.

I keep seeing the others around the Archives. They... "̵̢̢͈̥̺̘͒̈́̅̎́͠"̷̨̥͚̼͈̭̃̐̚"̴̰̕͜.̶̞͍̈̉͜͠.̴̨̢̝̱̼͚̅̑͝.̷̡͉͂́̀̚̕͠ safe, which is what I wanted. I wonder if being able to see them is a little gift from Lukas. Prove he keeps his promises.

I haven't seen Martin. Not since... well.

…

I hope he's ok.

….

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

….

[ _flatly irritable_ ] Don't know what you're clicking on for. I've got nothing for you. [ _a shifting, like someone turning over_ ]... Let me sleep.

…

[ _a buzzing silence. It lasts a long time_ ]

[CLICK]  


* * *

   
[CLICK]  
  


"̵̛̳͇̯̖̺͑̉̿̀͊"̷͉̄͒"̴̯͒̿͛̄͋͋.̶̛̛̤̃͋.̷̛̰͓̪͚̞.̸̧̛͚͚͙̺͓̋̓̋̐͘,̶̨̤͍̤̝̊,̴̯̱͆͆… uh, harder to see anyone around the Archives. It's not even just the fog, it's like... As though they're overexposed. The light's too sharp and their image is blurred, barely there. When it is there.

… sometimes it's days without seeing anyone. I think they're days.

They're fading. Or I am, I suppose.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

I want... I'm finding it hard to want anything any more. The feeling sits flat and unfamiliar in my head. I don't want to know, I don't want to see. I want to sleep, mostly. I've been doing a lot of that. But I... somewhere, I don't want to be just another mystery. So "̸̫̙̗͚͉̪͂͋̒"̶͎̟͈͎̤̐̓͐̕͜͠͝"̶͎̬̣̐̓.̴̧̰̞̏̑̚.̵̞̔̇̈́.̶̟̠̲̹͔͋,̸̡̞̳̜͕͉̍̽̓̈́̃̄,̴̫͙̓͌̽̀̐.̶̛̹̦̲̳́͗̆͜ ... message. For the next Archivist maybe. But if – if I am being honest, I don't want to leave a message for them. I don't know them. Their world, whatever world they've inherited, it isn't my world. I've been, it's hard to think mostly, like catching water in my hands, but sometimes I think about Gertrude. How little we ever knew her in the end. What she did and what she sacrificed and what she became, it's all just ghosts on the tape.

Martin. Martin – I don't – I don't know if you're safe. And there's a lot that we haven't said to each other. And I – I am sorry. Truly. I never... I never deserved what you would have given me so freely. And I could have changed, I could have become a better man, and I would have, for... but there wasn't ever a moment, a moment for us to both stop. Or there was, and I let it pass by. We never really talked, did we? You tried, I think, but I was always....

[ _a long pause_ ]

… [ _clearing throat_ ] Anyway. Martin, I need to tell you, about the dreams I've been having, here in the vacant. Because I think – I know where Aziraphale is, Martin. And if you ever hear this, you might be able to find him.

So. I guess I should make a statement. I don't have to I suppose, not now. But it seems suitable. I won't get the chance to make many more, and I want them... want them to matter.

Statement of Jonathan Sims, the current Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding unquiet dreams. Statement recorded direct from subject, for the attention of Martin Blackwood. Date uncertain.

I don't know if I ever told you about the dreams. There wasn't time I think. I was... adjusting to what I've become, and you were already working for Lukas. I don't... I need you to know that I understand why. I felt betrayed... or maybe jealous, I don't know what I'd call it, and I... despite that, I knew you'd never have done it without reason. Things were hard for all of us, but you and Basira and Melanie, you were left behind. You all dealt with it the best you could.

When I was asleep, I became. You know what I turned into, you've heard the statements, probably committed a few of them to tape. And so when I woke up, when I – I made my choice, I came back wrong. Changed would be a nicer way to put it, and you'd tell me off in that mildly disapproving way of yours, for my turn of phrase, but I'm not much in the position for kindness.

So, now I'm different, when I sleep, I dream. Dream isn't right, maybe. I witness. I relive the worst moments of people's terror, I stand unmoving on the side-lines and am complicit in their abject suffering, and their recollection feeds It. Feeds me. I get snatches of a tableau of violence and misery, and I can only – I don't help. I don't think I can, but I would be lying if I said I had tried. There's no empathy, not in those spaces, I don't feel for the people who have given me their statements. I am – I am scared that a part of me, the part that is growing bulbous and fat and greedy behind my eyes, enjoys it.

I see the same moments. Over and over. I sometimes even see you. Back when we could all still pretend that these things didn't exist in our world. Or that they were an anomaly. Barricaded in your flat, the gaps in windows and around the front door stuffed with cloth and bedsheets and socks. The room sharp with sweat and stale air and microwaved meals. A writing, squirming onslaught outside your door, the desiccating corpses of worms near the entrance, Jane Prentiss returning to knock with a terrible insistence. You don't make a sound, but you're terrified. Your legs are shaky with fear, your whole face drawn in an exhausted blankness. You're such a scared person. That's... that came out wrong. I don't mean you're a coward. I mean, you don't put on a front, not like some people. You'll admit your terror. It can't consume you, because you acknowledge it, face it anyway. I think... I think you're incredibly brave, Martin, for what it's worth.

It's only direct statements. The ones I took from people, that they felt in some way compelled to share.

Sometimes, I... I even see Tim. I don't miss him any more – this place has gorged on that emotion, swallowed it down. I don't know how to feel about that. But, I digress. [ _blank chuckle_ ] I would have scolded you for that. I only hope you can indulge me. It's not as easy to stay on topic.

I revisit the statement of Caoimhe Ni Bhraonáin. I watch, frozen, pitiless, as you and her stand in those corridors, every picture another picture of the corridor, the monster at the end of it, parts of whom weren't always a monster. She's clenching her jaw, and her shoelaces are beginning to come undone. She's never been so scared, and I... revel in it. It's sharp and bitter and I allow the moment to linger on the details, how her heartbeat pounds impossibly loud in her ears as Michael stalks closer. How her hand is stinging, dripping blood on the carpet. How your thoughts are a fluster of guilt and shame and longing. You think you're going to die here, and you're worrying about your mum. You're worrying about Tim. Me. You think that I'll be angry that you did something so stupid as going into the corridors, that I'll mutter under my breath about how useless you are, that I won't mourn you. I – It is my fault, that I gave such an impression. Believe me Martin, I would have missed you more than I knew how to say, even then.

Last night, or at least, the last time I slept, the memory didn't stop at this snapshot. I heard the shriek and smash of Crowley arriving – a flash of what I imagine his true form looks like, and there was the phantom itch on my skin. I saw you and her being pulled away, Michael howling enraged behind us; there's a scattering chatter of large gambolling legs, a hiss. In the statement, the being I'll come to know as Aziraphale pulled you out of the tunnels. I remember that. But even as the figure from memory pulled you and Caoimhe out of sight, there was another Aziraphale, standing by my elbow, watching the scene play out curiously with me. And then he looked at me, and I was so surprised I couldn't help but look back. I felt myself returning to myself. The continual sounds of violence made my heart leap, the hairs stood up on the back of my arms.

He had such a sad smile, this alternative Aziraphale. His coat was filthy, I noticed, and wondered why it took me so long. He has this cream coloured coat, but that wasn't the colour it was. It was the colour of grave-soil, smeared and scratched with dirt. There was buttons missing, there was a tear that took the bottom out of one of the pockets. His nails... His nails were broken and caked with earth. That... that detail sticks with me the most. It seemed, it seems gut-wrenchingly familiar.

I see they've gone and got you lost too, he said softly to me.

And then I woke up.

I am, I'm going to try and find him again tonight, Martin. I know where he is. Maybe I can help. Before it's too late for both of us.

That – That's all I wanted to tell you.

….

Be safe, please.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

[ _sleep heavy_ ]... I – wait! Oh for... I had it, I had it....

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

I...uh. Me again, Martin. It's been, I want to say it's been a few days since my last message. Time is uncooperative here. A lot of the time, I fall asleep and my time is dreamless. The Eye has less of a hold the longer the Lonely starves it. I mean, a good night's sleep, can't complain "̸̫̙̗͚͉̪͂͋̒"̶͎̟͈͎̤̐̓͐̕͜͠͝"̶͎̬̣̐̓.̴̧̰̞̏̑̚.̵̞̔̇̈́.̶̟̠̲̹͔͋,̸̡̞̳̜͕͉̍̽̓̈́̃̄,̴̫͙̓͌̽̀̐.̶̛̹̦̲̳́͗̆͜ ... think I'm losing more than I should. I wake up and my skin is webbed with frost. There's icicles in my hair.

…

One day I don't think I will wake up.

…

Ahem. Anyway. An update. I managed to find my way back to the dream of the corridors. I... I forced the dream to loop more than once. I should feel guilty, making Caoimhe relive this so often. I am forgetting what guilt feels like.

After a few loops, Aziraphale was there. Stood by my elbow. His eyes found mine. I felt the ice in my eyelashes cracking, and I breathed out a plume like I was stood on a sheet of snow. It was brittle, harsh in my throat.

Peter Lukas?, he asked me. I nodded, and he smiled sympathetically and told me how sorry he was to hear it. His fingernails were dirtier, bloody, some of them splintered to the root and spoilt by some trauma. There was soil in his teeth.

Where are you? I asked him, although I already knew.

It's so hard to see anything, he answered instead. In the Close and the Dark. Everything pressing in, a rumble as the earth shifts and squeezes so tightly.

You're in the coffin, I replied, and he nodded, and breathed out like there was something stuck in his throat. He coughed politely into the back of his hand, and dusted the skin there with crumbs of earth. He apologised.

One needs an anchor of sorts, he said. To counter both the Lonely and the Buried. I am... I am trying to hold on. Don't forget yours, Jon.

I wanted to tell him the truth. That I had been given a choice, that this was what I'd chosen. But there was a grinding, constricting sound off in the distance, and Aziraphale winced and gasped and then he was gone, and I was awake.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

….  
....

I don't know how long it's been. I am...

Martin?.... Mar – ,̴͍̎́̒͋.̴̛̥̎͌̚,̴͖̖̙̺̾̈́ͅ.̸̢̲͍̹̝̇̅,̵͇͔̲̅̒̍̈́̌.̶͕͈̉̅,̵̠̬̲̬̤̣́͂̂.̷̳̝̮̹̉̀̔̓̍̕.̷̙̒͐̄̎͌͘

.....

[voice thick] No. Don't be foolish. Why would he be?

.....  
....

There's no one in the Archives now. No one walks between the shelves. When I touch the files, my hands go through. There is a whole world here, wreathed in fog, and it's all for me.

I saw...

I didn't see anyone. [ _angrily, at himself_ ] It's my mind, desperate for contact. Inventing its own miseries.

My... I am trying to remember. The memories are distorted in the recollection. Or maybe not. I'm not sure. I try and think about Georgie. I couldn't... I couldn't tell you what she looked like. I think she had... did she have long hair? I remember her anger, mostly. How she told me I'd kill myself one day, how this place would be the death of me. I try and remember Martin. I remember how unkind I was. How unconsciously cruel, dismissive, how I.... ,̸̡̠̼̳̲̈́̉̓̋͒͌.̸̤̝͙̋̓,̶̠͔̮͚̽̚͝.̴̣͈̋̊̈́͝,̸̨̮̦̯̇̍͑.̷̜͂,̶̗̮̪̾̓́̈́̉ͅ.̸̥̯͈͇͆͝.̸̢͎̳̳͚̆̿͆͘͠'̵̰̱̩̻͂'̴͙̺̇̒̌́͝͠'̷̨̧͈̮̼̹̕͠ ... probably would be better if I just let it ….

No.

…

No. That's... that's what you want isn't it? That's what this place does. Georgie didn't always hate me. And once, I loved her, in the ways I could. I miss her. And Martin. He loved me. And it took me too long to feel the same.

….

You'll have to do better than that, Peter.

….

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

Martin. I – you aren't listening to these. Of course. I don't even know if I am still recording things. I am losing time, in the fog. I am trying. Know that I'm trying.

….

[ _confused_ ] ,̸̧̲̳͓͓̟̃͐̈́̏͘͠.̶͙̺,̸͉͖̤̝̬̈́̔.̵̖̓,̵̯͇͗̽̓̽͘.̷͎͓͈̫͛̏͐̂͐̂,̴͈̖̓͑̊͝.̶̬̈́͒̋̌͘.̸̛̣̻̥̓̃̊̚'̷̡̗̺͈͚̈́̈̀͗̎̐'̷͉̬͓̏̂͊̎'̵̭̺͍̙͆̆̓͜ͅ.̸̛̩͔̤̈̓̍̕.̷̘̩͔̈́.̴̛̜̺͈͈͒̀̂̾.̶̳̆͛ .. you doing recording? Hm. Must have pushed the... Nevermind.

…

I was... I was saying something?

…

I have seen Aziraphale again. A few times. In that dream space we can apparently share. He gave... I had forgotten, he gave me a statement once. In his bookshop. Invited me in, gave me biscuits and a near-scalding cup of camomile tea. We stood in the corridors, but instead of remaining there, he invited me into that particular story and we slid out of those corridors, away from Michael's scraping squeals, and I came to the moment he spoke of so fondly, where he and Crowley first spoke to each other. It... it soothed something in me, to see something that was not terror or nothingness. We stood off to the side as watchers, and talked. Just talked. About the things that we're holding onto.

I... in this place, I can see how the Lonely feasts on me. Patches of my skin bitten out of me, a void where warm blood and bone and gristle should be. The ends of my fingers are numb, blackened and whorled with frostbite, and I know I'll lose them soon. My skin is going blue. I don't know how much longer the rest of me will last.

Aziraphale carefully and kindly didn't mention my state, and so I didn't mention his. He is becoming less human. His flesh crushed in the Choke, he told me when I wasn't subtle enough, and he caught me looking out of the corner of my eye, and he tried to cover his mangled limbs, some of the bones powered into a lump of body, with what remained of his coat, modesty I think. I couldn't begrudge him it. Spare me looking at the bruise-coloured skin, his hands without fingernails any more, his lips speckled with dirt.

Good thing we aren't human, he said to me, trippingly, as though he wanted to make light of our states. The mess the Buried has made of him clearly bothered him.

He told me stories. Said he wasn't sure it would help, but that we might as well give it a shot, and what did I think of it. I... I drudged up the capacity to shrug, and he took that as a consent I couldn't communicate, and gave me a statement. Some meaningless little footnote of his history, a horrifying act from when he couldn't have charitably called himself a human being. I... I think it helped me. I watched my body as he spoke. Nothing, nothing was restored – I don't think he's strong enough to reverse the effect, and I'm certainly not. But nothing else was lost. And I could remember what Georgie looked like. She had a cat. I had never taken to cats before we started dating, but the Admiral had been insistent about my affections and so I loved him.

I offered to tell Aziraphale a story. One of the statements, to feed him in the same way his story had restored something in me. But the grinding returned and he couldn't stop a cry leaving his lips with a scattering of dust, and the Choke stole him back.

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

…. (̴̫̻̼͖̌̆̅͜.̷̙̈͗̉́̎'̴̡̧̦̣̩̺̎͊͊͝.̵̢̡̺̻̱̈̂̔'̷͍̖̂̓.̵̫͈̖̪̔͋̒̃́͜'̶̧̫̥̩̪̅̂͠ͅ.̷͎̣͕͗'̶͎͉̯͌.̶͍̹̏͊̒͛̈́͝'̶͇͉̣̼̃̑̂̈,̴̨̮̳̥̙͝͝^̷̤̺̰̦̹̈́́̐̇̚͘ͅ^̷̺̪̪̞̳́̓̍̑̕͝'̶̛̛͇͇̇͘:̸͇͗.̵̪̗̩̳̫̽͊͑̚̚͜.̶͚̯̦͍̗̞̽͗̄͋̆.̶͇̜̅̈́ͅ.̷̮̚.̷̻̣̳̈́̈͜ͅ.̸̞̃̉̽.̷̛̮͇̔̈́̐̏̆͜.̶̦̹̤͔͈͂̐̿̆͠.̶̦̯̦́̏͜͠.̷̛͔̮̖̓̊̈́.̷̢̙̉̑̊͝.̸͕̑:̸͈̀ͅ:̸̢̘͚̼̲̎̔́̐̓̓

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

We meet when we can. He finds it hard to sleep, his chest compacted by the press of earth, and the shivering keeps me awake. We snatch a few scant minutes, before he's dragged awake by the roll of tight, clay-like soil mangling another inch of flesh, or I dully resurface, swamped by fog, breathing in sea-mist and my fingers frozen into claws.

I try and give him statements. Sometimes it's a struggle to remember anything but this half-life but I've always been stubborn. I think it helps him. Reminds him there's more than the air-less dark. And he tells me of domestic moments, holidays and dates, the people he's known and the history he's seen, and it feeds something in me away from the point of starvation. I haven't lost any limbs to the gripping black cold yet.

….

Martin, some days I don't want him to help me. Sometimes, I just want it to stop.

...

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

…...

[ _throatier_ ] A-an update. For... for myself I suppose. I... I need to hear the sound of my own voice. To – to know I'm still here.

…

I see Aziraphale less and less. I think, I think he's losing himself.

He tried to explain it. The last time I saw him. We stood in his statement memory as the creature he was embraced a man equally inhuman, and he wouldn't look at the picture they made. His eyes were wet with tears, and they drew tracks down his dusty face. He said he was like... well, sort of like what I am. He's a being of knowledge, and that's how he sustains himself. And there's nothing to know in the dark, there's nothing to see in the choke and crush and hug of the earth. Just as here, there's only cold blindness, an absence of anything in the fog. But whereas the.... the Lonely will eventually consume me, there is no respite in the Buried. The Buried keeps, treasures its collection of stolen souls, dragging out their existence to feed it. So his ceaseless nature, his hunger to know is turning on his humanity, the human construct he's made. He has nothing to know but himself. And so he has started devouring himself. He doesn't know he's doing it, but he feels the loss, the gaps of what it's eaten up. Using his memories and his human-ness to feed his god.

The last time I saw him, he didn't look human any more. I found it difficult to look at him. His once rounded form, comfortable, comforting, minced down into a shapelessness. He blinked with a multitude of eyes, some blinded by the trauma of the squeeze, and told me that it was ok with a toothless, lipless mouth. That he quite understood how he appeared. That if I would be so terribly kind, if I would do him the courtesy of not looking. For his own pride, he confessed.

He asked me, if it... if it took him, all of him, completely, to leave him in the earth. I protested, and told him rather bluntly he was being stupid. But he shook his head, or whatever he had in place of that, and shivered, shaking out crumpled structures that could have once been wings, and said he couldn't bear to lose himself. What he built up despite his nature, his humanity chewed up by his god. That he couldn't stand it if that's all that was left of him, an unthinking manifestation, a violent fervency to know and see.

That he... he didn't want Crowley to see him like that.

I wondered if that would happen to me.

I promised him. I couldn't not.

…

[ _sniffling, clearing throat_ ] Martin. Martin, I know it's a horrid thing to ask. That it would just be another thing I've asked of you that's too much, that's cruel, that's not fair, but if.... "̷͈̜̻̲̭̯̓̿͋͋͘"̶̗̭̅̋͐̈̿!̸̢̲̮̩́̃̽͂"̶̘̭̹̰̿"̴̛̛͚̖̲͇̮͐̏

[ _a howling sound heightens to a whistle_ ]

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _sounds of a muffled thumping, a desperate shout, a confrontation_ ]

[CLICK]  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

[ _voice thick_ ] …... Give it – give it back!

PETER  
[ _a thick static sound blankets his words when he speaks_ ]  
What a naughty trick, Archivist, I'm impressed. I wondered how you had survived so long. [ _the sound of a rewind_ ] Let's have a listen to your secrets shall we?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Nuh-no, d-d.... [ _a stumbling noise_ ]

PETER  
Have to move faster than that. You've barely the strength to stand. A moth-eaten impression of a man. Half of you rests in the stomach of our god.

Now, I'll just....

[ _click_ ]

[ _The Archivist's voice played back through tinny, echoey, speakers_ ] And I – I am sorry. I never... I never deserved what you would have given me so freely. [ _the buzz of the fast forward_ ] .... I am losing time, in the fog. I am trying. Know that I'm trying.... [ _fast forward_ ] ...I offered to tell Aziraphale a story. One of the statements, to feed him in the same way his story had restored something in me. ….

[ _click_ ]

PETER  
[ _slowly_ ] Oh I see. Interesting. I didn't think you'd find the agent we pushed into the Choke. What a pity. You've just been drawing things out for yourself, you must know that. Making the horror _linger._

Such conspiracies of course, will have to end.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _weakly_ ] It's not... It's not...

PETER  
No matter. The Buried will keep him, mould him into something more pliable. And you're almost ready for our god, Archivist. But these clandestine meetings have to stop. Our god is patient, but I confess, am not. I'd rather you were out of the way. And you are in my territory, don't forget. I've made it so you don't need to eat or drink, your feelings and loves and passions and memories being gnawed away like frostbite, and now [ _clicks fingers_ ] look at that. You don't need to sleep any more. Isn't that useful? And what to do about this little thing? [ _the clunk of the recorder being inspected, a whining static disrupting that recording_ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
"̴͙̪͖͗̉̈"̶̧̘̠̘̤̇̽͂͜!̴̝̤͕͒̉̐͠ͅ"̴͓̐͆̊͂"̵̢̙͉̤̌.̵̰̑̄̒͘ ... take that too?

PETER  
Hm. We both know another one will just manifest. An annoying quirk of your former devotion. And I've little interest in listening to your emotional babbling. No, I think I'll leave it somewhere in the fog. But you've disappointed me, Archivist. Buoying yourself up with hope. Even in the nothingness, you won't stop looking, stop trying to see. So I'll take that too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for: isolation, body horror, being buried alive


	3. supplemental material #2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supplementary material regarding overtures towards a mutually beneficial arrangement between the powers, on the subject of the Magnus Institute. Attached to case file #0180610.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter went through A MILLION versions, sorry for the wait. 
> 
> Content warnings in the end chapter notes.

[CLICK]

[ _a padding on carpeted floor, a door with faintly squeaking hinges being opened_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _muttering unintelligibly to himself, before noticing someone_ ].... Ah! Um, oh I'm, sorry, I didn't, I wasn't making too much noise, was I?

CROWLEY  
Nah. Wasn't sleeping anyway. Budge up, will you?

[ _a crinkling of papers, some slipping onto the floor_ ]

MARTIN  
If you just move them over, I can... Well, you're sitting on them now.

CROWLEY  
My bad. Here you go... What's this one here? [ _puts on a mocking dry academic voice, quite pompous_ ] Statement of Ursula Braithwaite, regarding an ornate puzzle box. Statement given...

MARTIN  
[ _unimpressed, cutting him off_ ] Hilarious. Just, move them out the way– neatly! They're in piles. I'm getting them, trying to get them all sorted.

CROWLEY  
I won't dare interrupt your system then. [ _a pause, then quieter_ ] We found anything?

MARTIN  
I grabbed as many as I could, but... I mean, I don't even know if they're related or not. Half of them are mislabelled or lacking any follow-up material, and then there's the other half, which barely have any labels at all... I, well, it's not all bad, I guess. There's lots of material about people finding weird, I don't know, items with cobwebs on them, or urban legend internet message boards or something, and then they're all suddenly enthralled to spider-people or whatever, but that's fine an' all, but there's _nothing_ useful about where she might be or how we might...

CROWLEY  
[ _placatingly_ ] There'll be something. There will be.

MARTIN  
[ _noise of uncertainty_ ]

CROWLEY  
You should rest, you know. It's late. Even for a few hours.

MARTIN  
I know. I know. I... it's.. it's hard. At the moment.

CROWLEY  
Yeah. I get it.

MARTIN  
Bad dreams?

CROWLEY  
Something like that.

MARTIN  
I wouldn't have... I didn't think you needed to. Sleep, that is.

CROWLEY  
I don't really. I like it, but it's more a habit than anything. Slept through most of the fourteenth century.

MARTIN  
[ _clearly a little weirded out_ ] … right. That's, cool? I guess. And why... [ _grasping at what to say_ ] like, was it a particularly boring century?

CROWLEY  
Had its moments I guess, but mostly really dull. Aziraphale was off encouraging people to write poetry and question ideas they shouldn't, thought I'd get a bit of shut-eye .... Aziraphale told me you like poetry? That you write your own?

MARTIN  
I-yeah, it's not, it's not _good_ or anything but, yeah, I enjoy it.

CROWLEY  
What do you write about?

MARTIN  
I don't, I used to write about, normal things I guess. Things I saw, people I met. I've kind of stopped. It's hard to write when you're worrying about what's going to try and jump out of the shadows at you. And then, when I was working for Peter, I stopped wanting to.... I don't think, I'm not sure I can any more.

CROWLEY  
That's a shame. For what it's worth, I'm sorry to hear it.

MARTIN  
S'ok. Mean, it was my own fault.

CROWLEY  
That's a lie and you know it. None of that, not here. Look… I'll make us some tea, yeah? Perk us both up a bit. We'll take another look at those Chelicerae statements.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

[ _the background noise of papers being flicked through, thoughtful noises, a scratch of pen on paper_ ]

….

….

MARTIN  
Huh. Hey you. Hm, at least some things don't change....

… I've nothing for you, you know. Whatever you are, listening. We never really got to the bottom of that. I mean, I used to hope in a weird way it was Jon, probably an unconscious 'Archivist' thing, especially because you all disappeared when he, you know, died and all, and then, perfect timing, you all came back when he got out of the coma. Though, maybe it's a giant sentient eyeball or something, so....

…. I've just finished reading a statement about you. Filed under Web influence, but yeah, no, it was definitely you. Random academic type, the scenario was your bog-standard M.R. James 'reading a book you shouldn't and getting haunted or stalked or whatever', and I mean it was kind of disgusting. Skin all bubbling up like warts and then they sprouted eyes, just _everywhere_ , like measles..... Bit of overkill, if I'm honest. I'd say I'm not judging, but I kind of am.... Not that you really care I guess....

…

I don't know if Jon is listening to this. Can listen.

…  
…

If – if you can hear me, Jon. We're trying to find you, find Aziraphale. We've... we've got some plans. Just a bit more time.

It's hard, I know, I really do. Just, hold on, ok?

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

MARTIN  
Supplemental, I suppose. Not that anyone's listening. But an update. Or a lack of, because actually just _finding_ an avatar of the Web willing to, I don't know, get in touch, or help, or something. Turns out it's taking longer than hoped.

Crowley's gone to Ilford, to check out a sighting of Annabelle Cane. I'm, well, stuck here. Like always. Reading statements. I can't help, done enough damage already I guess.

I've been reading, um, where was it, round here some – aha! Statement number zero-one-two-zero-four-one-two. I don't think Jon ever got round to putting it to tape, and I'm not about to do it.

But I was reading, and.... Look, so it's about this woman. Her name, all the details are in the file, I'm not going to repeat them. Her friend has lost her husband. It's, it was a tragic accident, unexpected and unpredicted, he's sorting out an abandoned old shed way at the back of the garden, think he wanted to turn it into a summer house eventually, but the floor gives way, planks rotten through with damp, and well, he falls badly and hits his head, and it's... it was an accident. No one's fault. But the friend is, understandably she's heartbroken and grieving, and she'll do anything to have him back. So then, she sees these puzzles, right, in the crossword she used to do every morning with her husband before she left for work, and she's convinced that they're messages to her, about how she can get her husband back. She tells the woman, and the woman is suspicious of course, and she tells her it's the grief, she can't get him back, she's sorry but he's gone and he'll stay gone because that's the way of life, but she can't persuade her.

And then, few weeks later, the woman gets an email from the friend, all excited, full of energy and misspelt words where she's typed them wrong in her haste, saying she wrote to the crossword writer, that they were leaving the messages for her, they've promised she can have her husband back, alive and whole, if she does something for them. From the email, it's not really a hundred percent clear what the favour is – the woman asks of course, but at this point the friend stops replying to her messages. But, they asked a favour, and whatever it was, she does it, or the woman assumes she does, because it's around that time the friend disappears. The woman's frantic of course, and she calls the police and no one has seen the friend for weeks. And then, she just comes back. Like nothing's happened. She comes back, knocking on the woman's door in the middle of the night, smile wide and looking so so happy, and... the dead husband's there.

He's moving all wrong. The woman tries to describe it in the statement but she doesn't think she can. She says it's all jerky and stiff, like a marionette, like he's being pulled, and her friend is beaming and relieved like nothing's wrong, and the woman can't tell her that there's something in the way he shifts in the hallway light, moves like the legs she can see are not the ones he is moving on. And then, when she picks up the courage, the friend, she won't listen. Shouts and argues and tells the woman that she can't stand that he's back, that she's happy again, that he's been returned to her, and why can't she let her have this without spoiling it. She's sobbing this, desperate for the woman to understand, desperate for this not to be taken from her again, and the husband just stares without blinking with his round black eyes.

The friend disappears in the end. So does the husband. I think it's implied the husband ate her, but I'm not... I didn't want to read any of the supplemental material. I got the gist.

[ _annoyed huff_ ] And – that's that. But what the – what am I supposed to do with that? Is it, what, is it telling me that the Web is manipulative and can't be trusted, that it – it preys on the desperate and the weak and the vulnerable, because yeah, sure, news flash, what a surprise. Or – I don't know, is it saying that the Web can be bargained with, to an extent, but that what you get in return won't be what you wanted. I... [ _distressed noise_ ] God, I have no idea.

What if I get Jon back, and he's... he's gone. Really gone. Everything that was him, rubbed out by the cold, eaten away by the Lonely, and this ghost with his face comes back. Or what if – we don't even _know_ where Aziraphale is. Is he still – is he still falling? Have they trapped him somewhere worse? And, what if – what if he's dead already? I think... Crowley's trying not to think about it as an option, but....I think it would destroy him. A-and then there's Peter. Like, what can I do against him? I have... I don't have any powers, I'm not – I mean, it's kind of, it sounds really stupid but, I got claimed by _two_ powers, two definitely evil eldritch powers, and I didn't even get anything that could help! No creepy brain-reading powers or whatever Elias bloody has, no being able to vanish people, or turn sort of invisible, sod all but bad dreams. A-and even by, some really really unlikely miracle, we get rid of Peter Lukas, who takes his place? Some new horrifying boss? Elias? I just...

[ _a long silence_ ]

[ _a hitching breath_ ] God, what if this all goes wrong.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

MARTIN  
Christ!

CROWLEY  
Calm _down_ , it's nothing serious.

MARTIN  
[ _high-pitched_ ] You're getting... eurgh. I mean, I really don't want to be rude, but you're... you're getting _fluids_ all over the carpet, and if they stain, I won't get my deposit....

CROWLEY  
It's only blood, don't get in a twist.

MARTIN  
It's the wrong colour!

CROWLEY  
[ _snapping_ ] Well, I _do_ apologise that I didn't put in the effort to make my _person-suit_ more anatomically accurate. [ _a gasping hiss of pain_ ] I spent ages learning how to have eyelids, what more do you want.

MARTIN  
Just.... don't move.... I'll go, I'll grab....

CROWLEY  
Would you give me a chance to sit down? The taxis wouldn't take me, looking like this.

MARTIN  
Sit – Sit there. No, no, not there. Move the papers.

CROWLEY  
I will bleed on these blasted statements if I so choose.

MARTIN  
You aren't... it's not corrosive or something...?

CROWLEY  
Martin, I'm not an _alien_ , for christ's – [ _a sharp wince_ ]

MARTIN  
Shit. I'll... sit there, I'll grab a [ _moving away from the recorder_ ]....get a first aid kit or something.

CROWLEY  
Let me be, just a minute. They'll scab over in a bit, honestly, it's barely a –

MARTIN  
Stay still, will you. Right. Right. OK. Here we go. First things. Any allergies? Plasters, bandages, paracetamol?

CROWLEY  
… You're being ridiculous.

MARTIN  
It's a precaution! Are you or not?

CROWLEY  
Of course not!

MARTIN  
Good! Fine then! Now, stay still, while I clean this up. It'll sting. Could you... would you take your shirt off so I can get access.

CROWLEY  
I usually want to be bought dinner first.

MARTIN  
Please. You're so far from my type.

CROWLEY  
No, you're more into austere-looking, grumpy librarians – Ow!

MARTIN  
I warned you it would sting. Bring your arm back over, I've not...

CROWLEY  
But it hurts!

MARTIN  
Stop being a baby, and _give_.

CROWLEY  
It probably won't get infected, it's fine!

MARTIN  
The thing that did it, venomous in any way?

CROWLEY  
...In a manner of speaking.

MARTIN  
[ _stubbornly_ ] Then we need to clean it. I'll put a bandage on it. The smaller scratches, we'll get some plasters on them, they should be fine. Here. Look in there for a few, should be some, while I...

[ _Crowley gives a hiss of pain_ ]

Almost sorted.

CROWLEY  
You got any plain ones? They've all got little kids pictures on.

MARTIN  
They'll do the job.

CROWLEY  
But they're childish.

MARTIN  
Would you just... _Pick one._ Or do you want me to tell Aziraphale when he gets back that his husband got himself into a scrap, then refused a plaster because it would effect his 'image'?

CROWLEY  
You've a right mean streak, anyone ever told you. Anyway, we aren't married. And... you wouldn't tell.

MARTIN  
Try me.

CROWLEY  
[ _huff_ ]. _Fine._

MARTIN  
… So. What happened?

CROWLEY  
Well, it's not unoccupied, I can tell you that for a fact. She was there, but she left. Maybe a month back. Something else had moved in. [ _sigh_ ] But no. No lead on where to go from there.

MARTIN  
We'll cross it off the list. Try the next one.

CROWLEY  
[ _soberly_ ] That list is getting awful short.

MARTIN  
We'll find her. We will.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

MARTIN  
[ _muttering_ ] …. and then if you look at something like Josef Markus' statement, there are clearly ways to counteract the Lonely. And then there's... what's her... Naomi Herne, that's her, and she got away from them. So it's clearly possible, what with some sort of anchor or...

CROWLEY  
You talking to yourself in here...? – Ah. You're recording. I'll come back.

MARTIN  
No, no need, I was only – talking to myself mostly. It... it helps.

CROWLEY  
[ _dismissive noise_ ] Right.

MARTIN  
You could, you could give it a statement. If you wanted. It helps sometimes. Clears the air.

CROWLEY  
[ _bitingly_ ] I'm not giving that bloody thing any more than I have to. Beholding isn't your _friend,_ Martin, it's not on your side. It's not on anyone's. It's not even on Jon's.

MARTIN  
[ _keeping his temper, voice lower than normal_ ] ...I'm not _stupid_ , Crowley.

CROWLEY  
… No. No, no you're not. Sorry. That wasn't fair, I'm just... I didn't mean it.  I'll... I'll leave you to finish.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

MARTIN  
I – er. Well, Crowley's not here. He'll be gone for about a week, he thinks. A few leads to chase up, someone who might know something about how to counter the Lonely, or at least reduce its influence. And I'm, I'm here, I guess.

…

There's a – There's a spider in the kitchen.

…. Ha, it's probably nothing, right? It's... I guess it's normal-looking, ordinary, regular size. Minds its own business, and look, surely not _every_ spider means I've got some creepy infestation or I'm being stalked or....

… Who am I kidding. I... it's nothing I can put my finger on. Not exactly. But it's not a coincidence it's here. Weeks after we've done everything possible to find Annabelle Cane. But it's just there. Not doing anything in particular.

I should tell Crowley.

I should tell him.

… I think.... I mean I picked up my phone before. I was going to text him, tell him. Not to panic him, but to, you know, let him know. It's progress, right, it could be some sort of sign. But then – it's not – I can't _prove_ it, and maybe, I've not been sleeping, and it might be my mind, playing tricks – but still, it... it was watching me, when I picked up my mobile. I knew. I turned around, and I stared at it, and the skin on the back of my neck, it itched – I mean, the spider, it's not _huge_ or anything, I couldn't see if it was looking at me or if I was just being paranoid. It was just there, on the wall in the corner over the washing machine. It was, I mean, it felt like it was. Um. Waiting.

I think it wanted to see what I would do. I didn't text him.

I think, I think that was the right thing to do. I don't know. I get the impression it was. That I was given a choice and I chose what it wanted.

…. It's started weaving a web.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

Crowley text earlier. He's in Stirling, near Bannockburn. It's an old haunt of the Web. 

I, god it's funny what you remember from being a little kid. I used to go to the library all the time after school, Mum and Dad usually worked late, and I didn't, I didn't like being in the house on my own, so I used to pick up a book and sit on one of these battered old bean bags in the corner. I'd be there for hours, and I remember reading that story, about the spider and Scotland. It was – I can still remember the illustrations, ha – it was a story, a legend if you like. Definitely invented, not historical, but there was a period where I was working my way through loads of books on great battles and heroes, and the book was about Robert the Bruce, you know, Scottish king, scourge of the English, defender of freedom, etc. And well, there was this story that starts with him being defeated in battle against the English, and so, course, he's on the run, hiding out. And he's convinced that's it. That his enemy is too strong, that he doesn't have the power to outwit them, that he can't take being defeated any more. But while he's in this cave that he's found, he watches this spider. And the spider, it's doing what spiders do, right, trying to build a web. And it keeps falling down as it's trying to weave its web, one, two, three, four times. And it keeps picking itself up and going back at it. And finally, the seventh time, it succeeds. And after watching this, Robert decides to go back out and fight again, after watching the spider's example of trying and trying and trying again, not accepting defeat and then of course, he fights and wins the Battle of Bannockburn against the English forces, despite being hopelessly outnumbered.

It was a nice story to read, as a kid. Probably a load of old rubbish. It seems so much more childish, as an adult. Because there's so much out there, isn't there, that's stronger. That sometimes you try and try and try and you never manage it...

… I sound like Tim.

…

… I haven't told Crowley. The spider is still there. Working away. It's web is getting bigger. About the size of my palm now.

I'm going to keep recording updates on this – because, research and all, but yeah, I'd be an idiot not to leave some sort of evidence. I've read the statements, I've even recorded a few myself. About what happens to people caught in the Web. And it's rarely – you can guess how often it turns out well.

…

I keep, I keep thinking about Carlos Vittery. I think that was his name. I found his old statement, amongst all these papers. The ghost spider guy, or whatever that was, and yeah, I know how _ridiculous_ that sounded. Back then – it was easier, wasn't it, to laugh them off as people who had just seen shadows of things that weren't there, or who had overactive imaginations, or who were just liars. Even Jon – he had his whole [ _poor mimicry_ ] 'consider the importance of scientific rigour Martin, we can only accept verifiable evidence'... [ _a wry huff_ ] God, he could be such an arse. I had to do some of the follow up notes on that one, and – well, Jon didn't believe him, course. Delusional, he said, all dismissive as he could be. Clearly a man who was suffering from a severe phobia, who needed treatment and a clinically trained professional. He needed help, not a paranormal explanation.

But he... he was scared. He believed it, what was happening to him, a hundred percent, he was... he knew there were things happening to him, that shouldn't have been, that there was something wrong with the world he had found himself in, that he was being drawn tighter and tighter into a trap he didn't know he'd made. I keep thinking... I think some part of him must have been relieved, in some sick vindicated way, when they came for him. When their bodies dragged and crawled up over his ankles, as he cried out as they swarmed up him, inching their legs over his lips and scattering into his throat.

Asphyxiation, officially. Foreign organic material found in his throat, you said, Jon. You were, Christ, you could be so... _dense_ back then. It was, it was spiders, Jon, it was so obviously spiders, I mean the man was found encased in webbing, his throat packed with arachnids, and even then you couldn't believe that there was something beyond, something more, something else out there... [ _softening_ ] But, I know why you didn't. Or why you pretended you didn't. You had such a front you put up to everyone, in those days. It was easier to pretend, I imagine, than admit that those things really existed. It was... it was impressive in a way. How completely you could lie to yourself.

We were both such different people back then. … Yeah. Simpler times maybe.

If you'll listen to this Jon, maybe you'll be annoyed. Tell me to leave my house, to roll up a newspaper and kill the spider dead, that there'll be another way. That there's continuing to try, and try and try, and there's a moment where you have to admit defeat. That not everyone wins their battles.

Or maybe you'll understand why I'm doing this.

We need help. To stop Peter. We need the Web. And now there's a spider in my kitchen, and this is the deal that's being offered.

I'm going to leave it alone.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

[ _the flick and buzzing on of the kitchen light_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _thick with sleep, sluggish padding steps_ ] …. Don't mind me, just grabbing some water.

[ _tap running_ ]

[ _mumbling_ ] ….That web's getting big, huh. I mean, good job I guess. Ten out of ten for structural integrity.

Where have you got to....?

Eurgh! Where's the... what the hell are... get – get away from there. I... I've got some spray some –

… [ _jostling_ ] Sh – you little bloody, _ow_...

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

[ _rifling through cupboards, things being roughly pushed aside_ ]

Gotta be some here... come on, bite spray or cream or ... Ah. Ok. This'll do it.

… Come on, come on, calm down, don't panic. It was... it was only a creepy crawly. Probably wanted a snack of your spider, food chain, balance of the ecosystem, all that jazz. It doesn't have to do, it's – it's nothing insidious, it doesn't have to be the Corruption or whatever, it's an insect, a normal household insect, and you freaked it out, and it reacted like anything would have done.

There. Look, it's fine, it's only a little red. Maybe I should – no, you don't need to text him, it's a sting, it's not like you've been mauled, Jesus, Martin, pull yourself together.

There. That'll sort it out.

[ _footsteps_ ]

Aaand there you are. Back on your web now the big scary centipede has gone. Yeah yeah I got rid of it for you, no need to thank me or anything.

[ _tinged with exhaustion_ ]... I should stop talking to the probably supernatural spider.

…

I'm going back to bed.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

[ _beep_ ]

CROWLEY  
[ _over voicemail_ ] Martin? Hey, it's, it's me. I'm driving back, I'm just coming through Glasgow. Another bust. I'm going to... Look, I'm going to drop in to talk to someone who might be able to help. I'll tell you about it when I get back. Haven't heard from you today... Let me know.

[ _beep_ ]

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

 

[CLICK]

[ _a shaky breathing, deep inhale, exhale_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _very softly, his voice cracking_ ] Right.

…

I'm...I'm, um, I guess I should really, record this. In case it all turns out badly. I don't know when Crowley will be back, but... I mean it's all been turning out badly anyway, ha, it's been bad for a while now but yeah... [ _trails off a little_ ]... In case I've made a mistake.

I-I have to record this. It – it was a dream, I _know_ it was a dream, but that – that doesn't mean anything any more, does it, I mean, dreams can still.... _shit_....

[ _a nervous silence_ ]

[ _tight voice_ ] Statement of M-Martin Blackwood, regarding an encounter, and a request. Statement recorded by subject, 23rd July 2018.

I-er, it was about... [ _harsh sound_ ] I was asleep. I've not been... not well, y'know, what with everything, but I haven't, I haven't had any nightmares recently. Which, is pretty rare, I kind of average more than one a week since Jane Prentiss, but this. This felt like a nightmare.

In the dream, I opened my eyes in the dark. No blinking, no coming to consciousness, no begrudging slide into being awake. Just sleep, and then, not. I sleep on my side usually. Half-burrowed under the covers, so that when I wake up in the summer, I'm hot and sweaty, and I've struggled out of my shirt sometime in the night. Mouth all parched and feeling tacky and gross, pillow creases on my face and arms. It's good in winter though. Bedsocks, all cosy, cup of tea in bed, dozing with a book. Anyway, getting off topic, but that's what I usually sleep like. On my side, legs everywhere, arms all over the place.

Only.... only, when I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back. Arms by my sides, palms up, legs straight and sticking out over the end of the bed. I don't know what woke me. There was no sound outside – I sometimes get car alarms going off, or students coming back harmlessly leery and drunk, the odd couple having a row, someone dropping something upstairs. I'm on the ground floor, so it's more often than you'd think. But it wasn't that. It wasn't even that Crowley was back and had let himself in, was making a noise pottering about. I just... I just woke up. I-I opened my eyes, and the duvet was on the floor, my legs and arms bare and cool, and the first … [ _shaky_ ] the first thing I saw were the eyes.

It... god, it was right over me. Like it had been there for ages, and if I hadn't woken up, I wouldn't have known. And not like, you know, on the side of my bed, like some weirdly intense beside haunting, staring down, neck craned. N-no, it was on top of me. Its face a hands-width from mine. There was no breath, because spiders, well, they don't breathe through their mouths.... I don't even think I breathed. I could... [ _shudder_ ] I could feel... I only had shorts on, you see, warm night and all, so I could feel the bristles that coated up its legs, bracketing by my ankle, my thigh, and it was... it was coarse and prickling and _warm_ , and its... its body, I couldn't see because all I could focus on were its eyes and its mouth and... b-but I could feel it. The weight of it settled down ever so lightly over my chest, the tops of my legs, a rounded pulsing bulbous weight that held me down.

The spider stared at me. Its fangs twitched and it just... it didn't do anything, it just looked.

It was, I think it was about then I realised I couldn't move. Not because I was... although at the time, I couldn't be sure, I mean, I've always been more of a flight sort of person... a-anyway, there was a sound in my throat that wouldn't come out. I didn't want to spook the thing, so I tried to wiggle, I dunno, a finger or something, but it didn't... then I tried my arms, my legs, my head... and I was, yeah I was panicking, of course I was, and I was thrashing and shaking my whole body but every limb stayed wooden by my side, my body held like – like a corpse, and I was just... even my _eyes_ couldn't move away, I couldn't close them I couldn't stop _watching_ , locked in to observing this... this _horrible_...

It didn't do anything. I think it was waiting for me.

So I... after a while, I stopped struggling. And I-I waited too.

I think that's what it wanted. Because I knew, all of a sudden I knew I could move my limbs again. The sensation rushed back, and I felt the adrenaline shock through them, and my hands were trembling.

I could have tried to run, but I... I can't explain it now. It all, it all made more sense, in the dark, but it was – it was a test. It wanted to see what I would do. I don't know what it was testing for, but it-it wanted to – to know something, and whatever it was looking for, it clearly... [ _wobbly breath_ ]. Guess I passed I suppose.

I didn't... I didn't move. I breathed shallowly, I tried to still my shaking hands. And when it crouched lower to study me closer, its round eyes hollow and dark, and there were numerous warm, itching legs pressing tighter around my body, its-its fangs settled either side of my throat and I c-could – _christ_ \- I could feel them twitch when I swallowed, and o-on my chest, this sudden _weight_ , this heavy pressure holding me down, and still I didn't move, I didn't make a sound, I didn't scream even as the sound lodged in my throat, and I couldn't stop thinking about poor dead frightened Carlos Vittery with spiders in his throat, and... and then I woke up. Just now.

There was no spider. The room was empty, and cold, and my duvet was on the floor.

I...I want it to have been a dream.

My – My hand. Where the centipede stung me. There's a... [ _almost hysterical_ ] a webbing over it. Like a protective scab. A – and I've come into the kitchen, and there's... The web is huge now. It's, well, it stretches out with a densely woven spiralling pattern, and it's taken up the whole corner, easily four foot up and across, and in the middle – It's... it's an egg sac. The size of my hand, just hanging there. Writhing sometimes. The membrane flexing like it's shivered. The spider's gone.

There's... there's something in my head. It's not me. It's at the back of my mind, and it itches, and it's asking a favour for a favour. I know, I know exactly what it wants me to do. It's obvious, really. Like following crossword clues.

A-and, I don't....what if this is the wrong choice – I don't, [ _a frustrated sob_ ] I don't understand what any of this means! I don't know if I'm just walking into a trap, I mean, it's more likely, all of these things, all of these horrible, horrendous powers, they do things because it helps them, because it hurts others, to frighten people. But I can't... if I say no, then there's no other options, and I can't leave them, to die or be _devoured_ or whatever is being done to them, and I can't just do _nothing_....

Crowley would tell me to get rid of it. To take the other option. But there aren't other options. This is it. We can't get Jon and Aziraphale back any other way.

….

[ _scared, sadly_ ] One of them was always going to get me in the end, right?

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _footsteps, a large room, an echo_ ]

ELIAS  
I must say, I was surprised when they told me who my visitor was.

CROWLEY  
[ _shortly_ ] Don't lie. It's cheap. [ _pulling a chair out, a metal groan as he sits_ ]

ELIAS  
Hm. I suppose so. And yet lies are as much the purview of your power as mine. What lies have you told Martin? That you can help him rescue the Archivist?

CROWLEY  
It's not a lie.

ELIAS  
But there will be a price to pay, won't there. There always is. And you know what Annabelle Cane wants, from the Archives.

CROWLEY  
Martin knows the risks. And if there's any price to pay, it won't be him paying it. He's done enough already.

ELIAS  
I'm afraid that isn't how it works, weaver. I suppose it must be a kindness, knowing you are helping build the web to trap him.

CROWLEY  
[ _aggressively_ ] I don't need your mind-games, Watcher.

ELIAS  
[ _smoothly_ ] Of course not. So tell me, what can I help you with today? I am, as you can see, entirely at your disposal.

CROWLEY  
You know why I'm here.

ELIAS  
I want to hear you say it. Indulge me. It's so much more satisfying that way.

CROWLEY  
I want you to tell me where Aziraphale and Jon are.

ELIAS  
And why do you think I'll know?

CROWLEY  
Coy doesn't suit you.

ELIAS  
Forgive me. Old habits. My question maybe should be, why should I tell you? How does it benefit me?

CROWLEY  
They're in service to _your_ power. Surely the Eye wants to secure their release.

ELIAS  
My Archivist is certainly in service to Beholding, however unwilling he sometimes is. Your Aziraphale is rather a rogue element though. Not exactly loyal to the party line, is he? He's been playing at being human so long, it's perhaps tempted him to forget what he truly is in the dark. Maybe Beholding wants to leave him for a while. Remind him who he belongs to. What he is under all those silly trappings.

CROWLEY  
**Where** are they?

ELIAS  
[ _sighs_ ] I had hoped I wouldn't need to spell it out. [ _off-hand_ ] Peter Lukas has seen to imprisoning the Archivist. The Lonely has him, predictably. He might not have much more time before he's lost to it. And your Aziraphale is being kept in a place where he can't interfere, locked in the Buried.

CROWLEY  
[ _a pause, and then a slightly more hoarse, strained reply_ ] You'll help us get them out.

ELIAS  
And why would I want that?

CROWLEY  
Listen, you... The Web might be on your side, but I most certainly won't hesitate to...

ELIAS  
[ _coldly_ ] Are you going to threaten me, weaver? When I could show you exactly how much the sightless eye suffers under the crush of the earth, how his flesh is deformed and mangled, how his lungs are choked with dirt and grit. I could show you his terror, and oh, it's potent, it fills him up, it's almost the only human feeling he has left, and it's not the fear that he'll be trapped there, that you'll never find him, not at all. It's that you will, that the next time you see him, you won't be able to recognise him. Every moment you've ever shared together feasted on and ripped out of him to sustain his cruel existence, every shred of his professed humanity skinned from him. Would you like to know exactly how much your rejection scares him, more than never being free again ever could...?

… No. Because not knowing is worse, isn't it, Crowley? Not knowing how he suffers, where he is, how you can reach him. You don't see him in your dreams any more, do you? Thousands of years, and it's the first time in a long time you're truly feeling alone and frightened that this could all be taken from you...

CROWLEY  
[ _snarling, interrupting_ ] Shut up. Just, shut up. … You're... you're _embarrassed._ Embarrassed that Lukas tricked you. That he fooled you, that he took steps to prevent your stupid ritual when you trusted him to look after the Archives, that he _played_ you and you didn't realise it.

ELIAS  
[ _dismissively_ ] I have never trusted Peter Lukas. Your mistake is assuming that his move to undermine Beholding wasn't exactly what I wanted. An understandable one, I suppose from the information at hand. You weren't to know.

CROWLEY  
How... you bloody... how exactly has this helped you?! The Lonely has stolen your Archivist! It tried to take Martin...

ELIAS  
I _gave_ Martin to the Lonely. A trojan horse if you will, disguised as a gift. It was a calculated risk that it would draw Lukas out to try and make a play for the Archivist.

CROWLEY  
You... what the hell did you think would – and what? Jon? Is his death part of your bloody plan?

ELIAS  
Not at all. I have complete faith it won't get that far. The Web is involved now. You and Martin have made sure of that. And I can assure you, they are as interested as I am in the enactment of the Watcher's Crown, and the continued survival of my Archivist. And you've thought about that, haven't you, weaver. Because Peter Lukas, he's right in some ways, isn't he? With Jon out of the way, there can be no ritual. That's what keeps you up at night. Not that you might not save them, but the consequences if you do. What the reality of this 'win' might cost you.

CROWLEY  
You...

ELIAS  
You might get Aziraphale back, and he might be lost to his true nature. He won't be able to help himself, it's _instinct_ , he wouldn't be able to stop himself from hurting them. Would you do it, Crowley? Would you end him, if he begged you?

CROWLEY  
**_I'm warning you..._**

ELIAS  
And my Archivist. He will bring about the ritual, it's only a matter of time. And could you look upon the destruction he has wrought, and know that you will have been responsible, that you could have stopped him, but you were too _human_ to do so...

[ _a phone ringing, interrupting them_ ]

I would answer that, weaver. It might be important.

CROWLEY  
…..

[ _the ringing cuts off as the call connects_ ]

[ _talking on the phone_ ] Martin? I'm in the middle of... Slow down, _slow down,_ tell – Martin, you need to... Tell me what happened.... Right, right, I'm... I'm on my way, I'm coming, just don't... Martin? Hello? _Shit._

ELIAS  
Sounds important.

CROWLEY  
Would you shut the – If I find out he's been harmed, I'll be back here, Watcher. And unlike the Archivist, my humanity does not require my mercy. And no matter what horrors you try and cram into my brain, what terrors you think will stop me, it will not prevent me from what I will do to you.

ELIAS  
Such promises. You will be back, albeit for different reasons. Until then, this is goodbye, Crowley. Do give my regards to Ms Cane.

[CLICK]

 

* * *

  
[CLICK]

[ _a doorbell being rung insistently_ ]

CROWLEY  
Martin! I don't have the key! Martin, open the -

[ _the lock is turned from the inside, the door swings open_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _hoarsely_ ] Hey.

CROWLEY  
Martin! Jesus, on the phone you sounded...

MARTIN  
[ _tense_ ] Crowley. We. We've got a guest.

CROWLEY  
...Oh.

MARTIN  
She's... she's in the living room. I've... I've put the kettle on.

CROWLEY  
She's not... Martin, she hasn't hurt...?

MARTIN  
No, no, no. Nothing like... She wants to-to have a chat. About – about what to do about Peter Lukas. And to – she knows where we can find Jon, and Aziraphale. How we can get them out.

CROWLEY  
….Very well then. It would be rude to keep our guest waiting.

[CLICK]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: spiders and generalised creepy-crawly shenanigans, Elias' usual brand of mind-fuckery


	4. addendum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> addendum - notes from 31st July 2018. Related account regarding the dismissal of Peter Lukas and the restoration of the Archivist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings apply. 
> 
> Next chapter up immanently.

[CLICK]

[ _someone fiddling with jangling house keys. an open window allows a muted impression of outside to trail in._ ]

[ _a door opens, making a complaining whine_ ]

CROWLEY  
I don't know how that squeaking doesn't drive you up the wall. Bit of WD-40, sort that right out.

MARTIN  
Hm.

CROWLEY  
… You holding up OK?

MARTIN  
I'm. I'm fine. Just a bit... You know. Jittery.

CROWLEY  
Yeah. I get it.

…

Weather's nice out.

MARTIN  
You walk far?

CROWLEY  
Round the park, not too far. Thought it'd give you enough privacy. You made your statement?

MARTIN  
Hm. Left it with the other tape. You going to make one?

CROWLEY  
Nah. No point. Aziraphale already knows he's everything to me, I don't need to leave him a goodbye note to confirm it. And if things go pear-shaped... well, it isn't anyone else's business, if he's not going to be the one listening to it. God forbid the bloody thing ends up in your Archives.

MARTIN  
Point taken.

CROWLEY  
…

Right then. Time to get out there and cause some trouble.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _running, heavy foot-falls – in the distance, the pitched wail of the fire alarm_ ]

[ _the running continues, panting growing more and more out of breath; doors are slammed at intervals_ ]

[ _a yawning static swallows up the fire alarm_ ]

PETER  
Really. There was no need for all the dramatics. You could have just dropped by my office.

MARTIN  
You aren't exactly the sort to answer your phone.

PETER  
Hm. So. Now you've had your tantrum, and got my attention. What is it?

MARTIN  
You're playing stupid now? After everything you've _done_.

PETER  
Throwing out accusations early, I see. Forgive me if I'm not thrilled about being enlightened on the many ways you think I've wronged you.

MARTIN  
[ _nastily_ ] I'll start a list, shall I?

PETER  
[ _humouring_ ] _Martin_. There's no need for all this. Just, why don't you tell me what you want? I'm sure we can come to an understanding of sorts?

MARTIN  
I. I want him back. Jon. I want him back. The Lonely – it can have me, take me, whatever, j-just give him back.

PETER  
[ _almost kindly_ ] Oh, it doesn't work like that. You know that. The Archivist, he'll likely be gone by now.

MARTIN  
[ _trying to be aggressive, sounding desperately upset_ ] Give him _back_.

PETER  
Or what? What are you going to do? From what I've been hearing, you've been running around with one of the weavers, poor company, _really_ Martin, you do know how to choose them, lost causes every one. So I'm curious, what will you do?

MARTIN  
I'll – I'll tell everyone! What you've been doing, how you've been seeping into the Archives. I'll tell them all the ways you've been slowly isolating everyone here, the dropped calls, the missed messages, the deepening fog, I'll tell them what you've _done_ to this place.

PETER  
People are naturally inclined to loneliness, they won't notice anything amiss. A hundred little pockets of isolation, flickers of the vacant and absent that Forsaken can snack on. Try again.

MARTIN  
You won't, you can't get away with this, I'll tell – I'll tell them all, and we'll stop you, whatever you're doing, we'll...

PETER  
Martin, please, you're embarrassing yourself. Really, I'd expected a little more. You had so much promise as an acolyte of our god, and now you're –

MARTIN  
Your – I'm nobody's! I-I'm not – not _yours_ , not Elias', _especially_ not your bloody god's. And I'm, I'm telling you, give him back. Now.

PETER  
[ _a drawn out sigh_ ] Hysterics are so unbecoming. I thought I'd taught you better, I thought we were past this.

MARTIN  
Well, c-clearly we aren't then. I won't, I won't serve you. I won't serve your god, I won't help you with whatever you're doing, I'll have no part of – and when Elias, I mean, when he hears of this...

PETER  
And are you going to be the one to tell him?

MARTIN  
… I – yes. Yes. I will, I'll – l-let Jon go, o-or I'll tell Elias. I'll tell him everything, I'll let – let him rip it out of my head if he needs to. And maybe, if he doesn't, maybe I'll help him instead.

PETER  
[ _lower, sharper_ ] You'd help him bring about the Watcher's Crown? After everything?

MARTIN  
I –

PETER  
[ _harsher_ ] You are _ours_. You came to _me_ , don't forget that. I made you an offer, and you came _gladly_. You came to us lonely. You came to us lost, we barely had to push you. You've been Forsaken's for so long, haven't you, Martin? The fog was easy to get misplaced in, it took you in, it cherished you, and you _wanted_ it because it was oh so familiar.

MARTIN  
Don't you – I _never_ wanted...

PETER  
The friends who didn't include you, doesn't that sound right? The romances that never called back, the ghosted numbers, the dinners for one checking for missed messages, the parents who never quite wanted you as much as you needed them. Elias told me about you when he gave you to me. Martin, already so lonely, so perfect for our god. [ _growing more irate_ ] And just when I'm offering you a way to make that mean something, to fashion you into something so much _more_ , you start acting like a spoilt child, throwing it all away over some pretty toy. No. No, you're _ours_. Not the Eye's, not the Web's, _ours_. [ _in the background, static builds_ ] Y̶o̴u̶ ̷n̷e̵e̶d̴ ̴s̷o̴m̵e̷ ̸t̶i̵m̴e̸ ̸a̸w̵a̷y̴ ̷f̴r̵o̶m̷ ̶h̸e̵r̵e̵.̴ ̷. G̸i̷v̴e̶ ̷y̴o̴u̶r̶s̶e̸l̴f̴ ̶s̵o̵m̷e̴ ̴p̸e̶r̶s̷p̴e̵c̴t̷i̶v̴e̵,̶ ̶t̴o̷ ̷u̷n̴d̶e̸r̶s̴t̸a̸n̴d̸ ̴w̴h̸o̴ ̶y̵o̴u̵ ̷b̶e̶l̴o̷n̷g̵ ̶t̴o̸.̷ ̵

MARTIN  
What are you – ?

PETER  
Y̶o̴u̸'̴l̵l̵ ̸t̷h̶a̸n̶k̸ ̸m̸e̶,̷ ̶M̶a̴r̷t̸i̶n̶.̸ ̸Y̵o̸u̷'̶l̶l̸ ̸c̵o̷m̴e̷ ̴t̶o̸ ̸u̶n̷d̴e̸r̸s̶t̷a̸n̶d̴,̷ ̵o̸n̵e̶ ̶d̴a̷y̵.̶ ̸

[ _The static sound grows uncomfortably louder. Martin speaks – his words can't be picked up by the recorder. Then he is gone._ ]

[ _What follows is discordant. the rush and swish of a distant tide, a roaring static – over this, a growing distortion that stretches painful; then a scattering run, a hiss; Peter Lukas shouts, there is a wrenching, chittering, a flat puncturing punch of noise._ ]

CROWLEY  
_**Got you, you bastard.**_

[ _a slump of something dropping to the floor_ ]

CROWLEY  
That'll do for a few minutes. Right. Back you come.

[ _Crowley grunts as though strained. There is a ripping tug, like something elasticated snapping, a bitter howling wind that rises and then is snuffed out. Martin panting._ ]

MARTIN  
[ _audibly shivering, mumbling, slurring, attempting to gather himself_ ] Got 'im, got 'im, he's here.

CROWLEY  
Jesus, he looks. Martin, is he alive?

MARTIN  
I can't... I can't... Yes. Yes. He's... there's a pulse. Oh thank god. Lukas. Did it work?

CROWLEY  
He's out for now. Bound so tight he can't vanish back into the Lonely. I'll drop him off upstairs so they can deal with him. I'm sure Elias will want to do something appropriately nasty.

MARTIN  
And now...?

CROWLEY  
Aziraphale.

MARTIN  
You never told me what your plan was. Can I... do you need help?

CROWLEY  
I'm a strong independent entity, should be fine. If you hear screaming, it's probably me.

MARTIN  
_Crowley._

CROWLEY  
Martin.

MARTIN  
Artefact storage is the door off to the right. Coffin's down at the end of the third shelving unit.

CROWLEY  
Right. Got some rescuing to do. Caio.

MARTIN  
Good luck.

CROWLEY  
You too,

[ _Crowley moves away at a run. The noise of steps overlaid with a packed echo, the impression of many footsteps for every one._ ]

MARTIN  
[ _ragged_ ] Right. I – er, OK.

Jon? Are you – can you – ?

[ _a door cracking open with a forceful push_ ]

MELANIE  
[ _distant, nearing_ ] Here! He's in here!

DAISY  
Martin, what the hell bloody kind of stunt are you... the fuck?!

MELANIE  
Christ!

DAISY  
Jesus, Martin, what's happ – ?

MARTIN  
[ _ignoring them_ ] Jon? Jon, can you hear me? If you can hear me, er – squeeze my hand, OK?

DAISY  
Is he unconscious?

MELANIE  
Is he even breathing?

MARTIN  
He's conscious, I know he can – Jon, listen to me. OK? Sound of my voice, yeah. We got you, we got you out of there, Jon....

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _his tense breathing is suddenly audible, as though it's been turned off mute. It is rattled, rickety, growing harsher. This noise continues in the background._ ]

MARTIN  
…. s'good, that's good, Jon, come back to us, come on, keep breathing.

DAISY  
Let me – [ _hisses_ ] He's _freezing_ , what – what's wrong with him?

MELANIE  
His _skin_....

MARTIN  
Not the _time_. He needs – someone get a blanket or something.

DAISY  
I, I'll go, hang on. [ _fast thumping sounds, moving away_ ]

MELANIE  
Fuck – Martin, his...

MARTIN  
[ _quietly_ ] There we go, you're doing well, there, eyes open and everything. Can you – Jon, can you look at me? Over h – alright, alright, that's OK, just listen then, it's OK, you're out of there, you're out....

MELANIE  
He can hear us. Why's he not, why's he not saying anything?

MARTIN  
I don't think... He's trying. But I don't think he can really hear us, not really. It's all just static to him.

MELANIE  
And how the fuck do we fix this, huh?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _breathing becoming more choked, faltering – behind the sound, there is the same buzz heard during compulsion_ ]

MARTIN  
You're panicking him, will you just – Jon? Jon, it's OK. I think you should sleep now, OK? You're safe, we – we'll look after you. Sleep now, yeah?

[ _THE ARCHIVIST's panicked breathing slows, in and out, reduces down a thick, laboured sleep_ ]

MELANIE  
That was...spooky.

MARTIN  
Don't.

MELANIE  
Was that you? Did you –

MARTIN  
Melanie, can we just – Jon's not safe yet. The Lonely still might take him. We don't have the _time_ , so can we...

MELANIE  
I'll call an ambulance.

MARTIN  
That won't help.

MELANIE  
He needs a hospital!

MARTIN  
We need to get him a statement.

MELANIE  
I don't – now is not the bloody –

MARTIN  
You know what he is. You _hate_ it and I know, and I get it, but now isn't the – He, whatever he is now – he needs food. He's been – he's been starving, cut off, _blinded_ – a-and you saw him, you saw him after the coma. You know it'll help.

MELANIE  
[ _a beat, and then, subdued_ ] I'll go get some files from...

MARTIN  
No time. He can't exactly read them, can he? Look – help me get him into the store room. I'm not doing this here, where anyone could walk in.

MELANIE  
Then what?

MARTIN  
I'll – I'll give him a statement.

MELANIE  
Martin...

MARTIN  
I'm not asking you to do the same, Melanie. You've made your feelings about it pretty clear. Help me lift him. Please.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

MELANIE  
Sure about this?

MARTIN  
I'm sure.

MELANIE  
I – I'll be outside.

[ _footsteps_ ]

MARTIN  
Right. Um, OK. Jon? I – I don't – don't know if you can hear me. I know it feels – you're still there. Forsaken's not a place, right? Not really. And you're still there, most of you, adrift. And I don't... I can't tell what it took and what it _ate_ and what we can't get back, but it – it can't have you. You don't belong to it, do you, you belong with us. So. [ _clears throat_ ]. This might help. Here... here goes I guess. Not like you've not taken my statement before right? OK. Er. What to tell you about. Huh. Might as well. OK.

Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding the particulars surrounding his former employment with Peter Lukas. Statement recorded direct from subject. Interview conducted to Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

… Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding his memories of his father.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

 

MARTIN  
OK. Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding an early childhood fascination …..

[ _a air-ripping shriek_ ]

Christ, what the – ?

[ _door opening rapidly_ ]

DAISY  
What the hell was that?

MARTIN  
Why do you think I'll know?

DAISY  
It's coming from archive storage. Isn't that where your mate went?

MARTIN  
_Shit._ I'll... [ _standing, a clattering sound as a chair is knocked, almost toppled_ ] Daisy, watch him, will you?

DAISY  
And what the bloody hell are you going to do?

[ _door slamming_ ]

No answers. As per usual. Figures.

[ _several moments of background noise: padding feet, a chair scraping, moved to a different spot, a groan of weight on its feeble legs_ ]

Where did you go, then, huh? We were worried, you know.

…

You're too young to pull stupid stunts like this. Your greys aren't fooling anyone. You and Martin both. [ _a huff of wry humour_ ] Leave it to the professionals.

…

[ _from outside: an argument, the sound deadened by the distance, two voices. Jon's breathing starts to get louder._ ]

DAISY  
Shh. It's alright. Melanie's probably picking fights with the walls again, don't you worry.

[ _the argument is in dead heat – as the door opens, the voices are clearer_ ]

MELANIE  
…. it was _dangerous_ , I can't believe you let it into...

MARTIN  
…. I didn't let anything in! If you'd just listen....!

DAISY  
[ _hissing_ ] Shut the fuck up, both of you. You're agitating him.

Right. What the hell was that noise?

MELANIE  
Why don't you ask Martin? He might tell you, might not. Another one of the secrets he's keeping these days.

MARTIN  
Melanie...

MELANIE  
Oh fuck off.

[ _slamming door_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _drained, frustrated_ ] Great. Just, great.

DAISY  
Martin.

MARTIN  
Yes, what?

DAISY  
Mind filling me in?

MARTIN  
I'll. Right. OK. Can I, I was starting a statement, and Jon really needs –

DAISY  
Tell me afterwards.

…

You get on with your statement. I'm going to go to the shops, buy a six-pack of crap beer, and we're going to talk. This is the first time we've really seen you in months, Martin. You don't... we might not be friends but we're all here together. You don't have to do this alone.

MARTIN  
Yeah.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

I'll tell you. What the noise was, where I've been, all of it.

DAISY  
Good lad.

Any requests for alcohol? I'll go to the offie at the end of the road.

MARTIN  
Whatever's going.

DAISY  
My type of drinker.

Finish your statement. I'll be back.

[ _door closes_ ]

[ _background sounds. Jon's breathing can be heard – slower than is regular, cutting out at intervals as though it's been silenced. Some sniffling; low, tremulous attempts at calm._ ]

MARTIN  
[ _croaking, thicker, like he's holding back tears_ ]

I – er. S-statement of um, Martin Blackwood, regarding an early childhood fascination with spiders....

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

MARTIN  
I'll... just give me a...

BASIRA  
No. Don't be stupid. Sit down before you fall down. Take this.

MARTIN  
I – What is it?

BASIRA  
Poison obviously. Cleverly disguised in a coffee mug.

MARTIN  
… Stupid question.

…

Thanks.

BASIRA  
No bother. [ _quieter_ ] He's looking a bit better. Skin's all... all back.

MARTIN  
[ _wiped_ ] Yeah.

BASIRA  
His eyes?

MARTIN  
Unclouded. Working as far as I can tell.

BASIRA  
...all the right number?

MARTIN  
You can count.

I'll start again in a minute, I just need to catch my...

BASIRA  
What did I say? Sit. You got the recorder set up?

MARTIN  
I – er, yeah. I don't know if it helps the process, but it's – it's protocol. Jon would – I mean, it's there if it's needed.

BASIRA  
Fine then. Daisy and Melanie are making sure everything's back to normal. A few lingering spiders, but that's normal nowadays. [ _beat_ ] Your friend's gone.

MARTIN  
Thought they might be.

BASIRA  
What went into that coffin... it wasn't human, was it?

MARTIN  
… No. Strictly speaking, no.

BASIRA  
And what it brought out... I mean, we all heard it, Martin...

MARTIN  
What do you want me to say?

BASIRA  
… Can you trust them? Whatever you helped, whatever you let out of that coffin.

MARTIN  
Yes. They – they're on our side.

BASIRA  
That's enough. For now. Let's get on with this. Into the recorder?

MARTIN  
I-I don't think it matters. As long as he can hear you.

BASIRA  
[ _clearing throat_ ] Statement of Basira Hussain, regarding... regarding her first encounter with an entity associated with the Flesh....

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

DAISY  
… and look, I'm grateful, sure I am, but that murderous creep isn't an improvement!

BASIRA  
Shh, will you. Took me ages to convince him, he's only just dropped off.

DAISY  
In _my_ bloody cot.

BASIRA  
We both know you'll just climb into mine anyway.

DAISY  
And that's not the point...

BASIRA  
_Daisy._

DAISY  
I. I know, love. I mean, I'm happy Lukas has gone and all, but _Elias..._ I don't want you to be leverage against me again. I don't want to lose myself to the blood because he pushed too far.

BASIRA  
We'll work it out. We always do.

DAISY  
Any sign of the other two?

BASIRA  
The ones from the coffin? Nah. Then one of those things went in, Melanie said two came out, and now they've both gone.

DAISY  
Something to worry about?

BASIRA  
Martin seems to think we can trust them.

DAISY  
[ _non-committal sound_ ] Hm. Any change?

BASIRA  
Well, he looks more... more regular now.

DAISY  
Suppose its my turn.

BASIRA  
There's no obligation. I can –

DAISY  
N-no. I'll do it.

BASIRA  
Want me to leave?

DAISY  
As if I'd keep secrets from you. Stay, love.

[ _the creak of a chair_ ] Alright, Jon. You'd better be listening, you awkward bastard. You really – I don't what you did, something stupid I'm guessing, but you – you've given us all a scare. So I'm not repeating myself. Statement of Daisy Tonner, about, about my first job as a Section 31...

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

MELANIE  
Martin? Martin, our psychotic jailbird of a boss wants to have a …

[ _soft breathing_ ]

Ah. Well, fuck him. He can wait.

…

You did good. Whatever you did, Martin.

And you look like shit as usual, Jon.

…

[ _sigh_ ]

Why not. If it helps.

…

Statement of Melanie King. Regarding her experiences in a haunted castle, Lincolnshire.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

  
[CLICK]

MARTIN  
[ _noticeably exhausted_ ] Statement of Martin Blackwood. Re-regarding. Well – er. Unspoken things, I guess.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _really groggy, dry throated, sounding absolutely death's-door terrible._ ] … Martin, stop _fussing._

MARTIN  
[ _unmoved_ ] You were dead to the world half an hour ago, I _think_ I'm allowed to be a little concerned.

[ _background noises, a little ting of something metal being picked up_ ]

Now. Look up.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Are you ser – ?

MARTIN  
Look. Up. Good.

Down. Left. Right. Now, how many fingers am I – ?

THE ARCHIVIST  
_Five._ Four fingers and a thumb, have we _finished_?

MARTIN  
I'm checking you're not still _blind_. Excuse me for helping.

THE ARCHIVIST  
… what?

MARTIN  
Your eyes.

THE ARCHIVIST  
There was... there was something wrong with them?

MARTIN  
You tell me. They were all clouded over, like – like cataracts I guess. Cleared when the rest of you started being restored.

THE ARCHIVIST  
….

[ _struggling to recollect_ ] I found... I found something. Or someone I think, he didn't want me to find.

H-he didn't... he wasn't angry but, there was the recorder and he heard - h-he did something, and then – I couldn't, I couldn't sleep, and – Well. Everything was suddenly so.. It was all blurry. It wasn't... it wasn't dark. There was light, but there was only light. Unfocused, blazing light. But I couldn't, there was nothing to focus on.

[ _quietly upset_ ] I couldn't see anything for such a long time.

MARTIN  
[ _tentatively_ ] Who, Jon? Was it – did Peter do that to you?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _distantly_ ] Hm?

MARTIN  
Jon?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Yes?

MARTIN  
[ _prompting_ ] Peter?

THE ARCHIVIST  
… We were...We were talking about him?

MARTIN  
Shit. This – OK, it's fine, this might happen. It's, hopefully it's temporary. After-effect of that place, messes with the brain. It'll fade, when you get your strength back.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I – Martin?

MARTIN  
Yeah?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Y-you got me out. From there. I was in the Lonely, and you got me out.

MARTIN  
Me and Crowley. With – er, a little help.

THE ARCHIVIST  
And Elias is back, apparently.

MARTIN  
[ _defensively_ ] There was a cost, Jon. We couldn't just have...

THE ARCHIVIST  
I wasn't... I wasn't criticising. I only wanted ...

Thank you.

MARTIN  
[ _a little caught out_ ] Ah, er, well. You're welcome?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _as though just remembering, a jarring shift in tone_ ] What – Martin, what about Aziraphale? He was – He was in the Buried, they put him in that coffin and he was – he couldn't....did Crowley get him...?

MARTIN  
Yeah. Yeah, he got him out. Close, but he got him.

THE ARCHIVIST  
And, he wasn't....? [ _fearful]_ Martin, was he lost? Did Crowley get _Aziraphale_ back?

MARTIN  
He's.... It took a lot out of him. Aziraphale is...

Christ, Jon, we don't even know. He was, god it was a _mess_ , I don't know what it did to him, if it was even _him_ Crowley dragged out of there. He wasn't, wasn't _right_ , he wasn't _himself_ , you know. A-and I know we got you back, despite... despite everything it tried to take from you, but I don't, what if it took... what if it stripped him of everything he had to lose and left that... that _thing_ in its place?

…

I don't know. I just don't.

THE ARCHIVIST  
But you got him out. He's free, that's got to... That means _something._

MARTIN  
Suppose. [ _heavy exhale_ ] He was – he was really badly hurt. They both were.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Where are they now?

MARTIN  
I – I don't know. I guess at Crowley's flat? There's not, well, there's no bookshop any more is there?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _sharp inhale_ ]

Peter did that?

MARTIN  
Simon Fairchild. Same evil-touched bastard, different face.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Christ.

Have you heard anything from Crowley?

MARTIN  
No. Nothing. You've been... we got you out about three days ago. So. But, huh, hey, no news has to be good news, right?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _almost whispered_ ] Right.

…

[ _coming to a decision_ ] Now I'm – er – back, I – we need to take a record. I need to know what happened. What I missed. Are the others still around?

MARTIN  
Yes, but... I really don't think you should be jumping back into things so soon.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I'll be fine. It's important we have a record of it.

MARTIN  
And I think that surely it can _wait_ until...

THE ARCHIVIST  
Please, Martin. I need to know what...what this _cost_.

MARTIN  
…

Fine.

It's – it's fine, Jon. I – I get it.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _sincerely_ ] Thank you. I'll grab Basira, if she's about.

MARTIN  
Her and Daisy were in the staff room.

…

Can I, um, Can I stay while you... you know, do your thing? I mean, I won't interrupt.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _surprised, pleased_ ] I – yes. Certainly.

I'd – I'd like that.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _knocking_ ]

BASIRA  
[ _behind the door_ ] You ready for me?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _his voice still scratchy, breaking at intervals as though he's stretched his voice. This continues throughout_ ]

Yes, come on in.

[ _the squeak of the chair_ ]

BASIRA  
He staying then?

MARTIN  
I, um...

THE ARCHIVIST  
Er. If you'd... if you'd rather this was a private account....

BASIRA  
The look on both your faces, honestly. Nah. S'fine. It's nothing exciting, I missed most of the wild hi-jinks.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Tell me what you did see anyway?

BASIRA  
Statement?

THE ARCHIVIST  
If you would.

BASIRA  
Like old times, almost. The good old days before all this.

THE ARCHIVIST  
There were never any good old days, though, were there?

BASIRA  
No. But it was nice, the ignorance.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Mmm. [ _gathering himself_ ] Anyway. Let's begin, shall we?

BASIRA  
Tape recorder seems to think so.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _muttering_ ] Bloody things.

Statement of Basira Hussain, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, regarding... whatever happened to Peter Lukas. Statement taken directly from subject, 31st July 2018.

Whenever you're ready.

BASIRA  
Not loads to tell, really. I was up on the ground floor, over by reception – Rosie had requisitioned some books for me from the British Library, and I was having to fill in all the reams of paperwork for those, you know the score, disclaimers, promises not to use them as mug coasters, the standard. We had been... We didn't know for certain what had happened to you, because, you know, no freaky mind-powers, but you just disappearing like that after the Hunt attacked – well, it was dodgy looking at best. Lukas said you'd been called away to some important business, whatever the hell that meant, so he was clearly being obnoxiously ominous – and then we found some of the files ransacked, just gone, all related to accounts of the Lonely, or Web – I'm guessing you had a hand in that, Martin?

MARTIN  
[ _embarrassed_ ] I – um – sorry about that?

BASIRA  
From that, it wasn't much of a leap to assume something bad had happened. That Peter was involved and Martin was, doing whatever you were doing. Don't take this the wrong way, but there wasn't a lot of faith going round for you, Martin. Sneaking around with Lukas for so long, we didn't know if you were on our side, or being I dunno, groomed to join Peter's weird foggy cult. But we knew you were on Jon's side. That if Peter had done something, you'd be trying to stop it.

So we'd been trying to do research of our own. Ways to expose the Lonely, return those from its banishment. Lukas didn't stop us. Smirked on the rare occasions he dropped in, showing up making cryptic comments. Creep. I think it amused him, to see us struggling to get you back from wherever he sent you.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _makes as though to speak_ ]

BASIRA  
I can see you trying to work out how to thank us. Don't. You don't need to. You did the same for... You went into the Choke. You brought Daisy back to me. You brought Melanie back from the Slaughter, even if she doesn't know how to forgive you for it. So don't.

… I'm getting sidetracked. Anyway. Reception. Me and Melanie were there. Chatting really, something about something on telly, not that either of us watch telly any more. So we're there, right, and then the door _whacks_ open, like properly bounces off the wall, the glass wobbling so violently I thought it might shatter with it. Khalid, he yells with the shock, swears blue murder , probably terrifying whatever mild-mannered researcher he's on the phone to cross-referencing whatever, Rosie jumps up like she's ready to be a one-person battering ram, and then _you_ run in, looking like – Oh, sorry, proper names, I forgot. So then Martin briskly walks in, looking awful – like, seriously, properly awful, taking a leaf out of your book, Jon, but like not just a page but skimming the whole book, checking the index –

MARTIN  
I feel – uh, is this level of detail really necessary?

BASIRA  
Just saying what I saw.

MARTIN  
[ _mumbling something passive aggressive under his breath_ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _his voice sounding stronger already_ ] Continue please, Basira. Personal comments to a minimum.

BASIRA  
Whatever. So, Martin comes walking in, looking like death dragged in, and he catches sight of me and Melanie and swerves over to us. And then behind him, is this other guy I've not seen before. Tall, not Martin's height but like, gave the impression of _looming_ in a way, you get me? One of those people who seems as if he's waiting for you to turn your back before he starts making trouble. Looks like he's wired on too many espressos, all well-dressed like he thinks he's god's gift, stupid sunglasses on indoors, doesn't even make to take them off or anything. Martin's saying something to Sunglasses Guy, and I think it was something like 'did we really need to make such a big entrance?', but they were too far away to hear anything else.

And then Martin comes over, and tells us that we need to set off the fire alarm, get everyone out the building, and stay out. Melanie's all ready to have a scrap of course, and she's ready to drag Martin out because it's been over a month, and we've heard _nothing_ , and now he's coming in, deliberately disruptive, making demands and expecting us to just jump through his hoops. No offence or nothing.

But then you stressed that – sorry, Martin said – that he needed Peter's attention. That the Lonely had Jon, that they were trying to get him out of there, but we needed to trust him. Melanie's interrupting, asking who the hell Sunglasses Guy is, and Sunglasses Guy looks at her, unimpressed and makes some little quip about having introductory icebreakers later. His look is tight. The mechanism's rusted on his face. Like he's got nothing he wants to smile about but with this fake bravado plastered on anyway. Covering something that's running empty and running scared and running out of time. Like one of those people we used to get, back when I was on the force. Where life's just kept, you know, throwing bricks instead of balls and expecting people to catch. I think that's why – one of the reasons – I went along with it. Because Martin stood close, like he trusted him, the same expression not quite hidden on his face. Because they both looked strung out and terrified, holding a guttering candle in a dark room and willing it not to burn down empty.

And I _want_ answers. I want to ask where he's been, who this guy is, how he can even hope to stand up to Lukas.

But you have to know, sometimes, when to back off and let things play out.

So I asked if his plan, whatever he was going to do next, if it would stop Peter, if it will get Jon back. And Martin didn't pause, says yes. So that was that. I said I'd help. The smile was a wash of relief over his face. He said he was sorry he couldn't go into detail, but he and this guy – Crowley he said, and the name pinged, you know, I've read enough of the statements to recall one of the Web's lot – have a plan, to remove the Lonely from the Archives, but that people need to be outside, away from the place in case it isn't safe. That we couldn't lose anyone else to it.

So I made sure it was. I broke the fire alarm call point window, and we started the evacuation. The usual, grumbling researchers and interns and admin staff filing out, all wondering what the hell was happening, Khalid trying to shepherd them so they don't block up the pavement outside. Then I'm on the phone with the fire services, telling them its a false alarm and all, not to send any one, and then bloody Elias walks in, strolling in in his suit, tie all fastidious as usual, like he hasn't just been in jail for months. He smiled at me, like he was pleased to see me, greeting like we'd... like he'd been on a holiday, like he was happy and wanted to catch up. Melanie was all ready to tear him open, spitting fury, asking him what the hell he thought he was playing at but – you know, in a more Melanie sort of way – but he made a dismissive gesture, and told us we'd have to excuse him, that we could save the chit-chat for later, but that he had a staff issue which required his immediate attention. And then he walked off, cool as you like, up the stairs to his office.

And then – guess you know the rest really. When we all heard that noise – god, it was horrendous, and it definitely, it couldn't have been a person making that – and Melanie bolted downstairs to see what it was. When I got downstairs a few minutes later, you were back, Jon, moved into sleeping quarters and looking – well, pretty eaten up. Tall, dark and lanky with the sunglasses had gone somewhere, but Melanie would be able to tell you more about that. And that's... I think that's everything.

You want anything else?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _voice now almost back to normal_ ] That's everything for now. Thanks, Basira. Statement ends.

BASIRA  
OK..I'll let you rest, though I don't think you need it as much now.

…

's good to have you back, Jon.

[ _door opens and closes_ ]

THE ARCHIVIST  
… so. That was your plan for getting Peter Lukas' attention? Kick up a big fuss and loud noises and hope he'd come running.

MARTIN  
Worked, didn't it?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _amused_ ] Not exactly subtle.

MARTIN  
It didn't need to be. He doesn't like having attention brought to himself.

THE ARCHIVIST  
But he also doesn't... Martin, he's not exactly someone who you confront. He'd sooner vanish people than have to deal with them. That was... it was such a reckless move.

MARTIN  
It wasn't reckless. I wasn't _winging it_ , I knew he'd talk to me.

THE ARCHIVIST  
How?

MARTIN  
Peter... well, he liked me, in his own way. He wanted an assistant, liked having someone he felt he could control. That he could shape, he could mould into another acolyte for Forsaken. He'd talk because he'd want the opportunity to draw me back to Forsaken.

THE ARCHIVIST  
So you thought that if your confrontation with Elias hadn't ended in you being horribly torn apart, that 'get them angry and hope for the best' strategy... it would work just as well with Peter Lukas?

MARTIN  
No. Elias was... when I made him angry, he took it as an attack. An annoyance , if you like, that could disrupt all his chess pieces if left unchecked. With Peter – we both – me and Crowley, we knew I couldn't pose a threat to him, and he knew it. But he still wanted an assistant, someone who might come willingly given incentive.

THE ARCHIVIST  
So you staged a temper tantrum, a few toothless threats and what, hoped Lukas wanted to keep you as his enough to only try and make an example of you?

MARTIN  
Thereabouts. I threatened to side with Elias. To help him with the Watcher's Crown. He didn't like that.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I can only imagine.

…

You knew he'd banish you. I understand that, I – I don't.... it was _incredibly_ dangerous, you shouldn't have put yourself in... it was a _risk_ and if it hadn't....

MARTIN  
If you're expecting an apology, Jon, you aren't getting one.

THE ARCHIVIST  
No. No, I'm not. It would be rather hypocritical of me, I expect, after all the rather reckless actions I've been involved in.

What I don't understand is how you found me. The Lonely isn't a... it's not a prison, or a box you can shove lots of people inside. Even if we'd both been inside, we'd both been exiled there, we wouldn't have been able to interact, that's not how... it's not the Buried, you can't have company with you in the Lonely. You shouldn't have ever been able to find me.

MARTIN  
No. No, you're right, I shouldn't have.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Then, how...?

MARTIN  
Can we.... later. I promise I'll explain, I promise, just – later?

THE ARCHIVIST  
…

Of course.

Well. I'd best ask Melanie to come on in.

MARTIN  
In ten minutes. I'll put the kettle on first.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I'll be –

MARTIN  
Tea. I'll grab your mug. No arguing.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _suddenly, tenderly fond_ ] I wouldn't dare to.

[CLICK]  
  


* * *

 

[CLICK]

[ _the echo of the corridors]_

THE ARCHIVIST  
Melanie? Melanie?

MELANIE  
Up and about I see. Sucker for punishment as usual.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I won't keep you long. I want to, if you wouldn't mind making a statement.

MELANIE  
I do actually.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Oh. I, um...

MELANIE  
It's late. You should be asleep, Jon. Not lurking round trying to get all the puzzle pieces together.

… You look better. Shouldn't be surprised. How you holding up?

THE ARCHIVIST  
I – uh, I mean, fine, I suppose. As well as can be expected.

MELANIE  
You were over a month, in there.

THE ARCHIVIST  
It... it felt longer, somehow.

…. You went to archival storage, didn't you? You saw what came out.

MELANIE  
[tight] Don't. You're not roping me into this, I said I'm not giving a statement. Not tonight.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Tomorrow?

MELANIE  
When I'm good and ready.

…

Have you spoken to Martin? About what came out?

THE ARCHIVIST  
I haven't had the chance, no.

MELANIE  
It was. Look, I get it, we were desperate, he needed to make choices, but he – Martin let that thing in here. Where we're supposed to be __protected._ _And whoever that guy was, he pulled something that wasn't a person any more out of that box. It was an instinct, a screaming, panicked animal that lashed out and hurt him, tried to hurt me and Martin.

We read enough statements here. About people messing with things they don't understand. It could have killed people. We don't know what that coffin did to it, we didn't know what the Lonely did to you. You could have come back, and you might not have been you, not any more. And who is to say you wouldn't have hurt someone? Ripped their thoughts out of their head. You would have been in pain, starving, you wouldn't have known what you were doing, not until it was too late.

That thing that came out, it didn't know what it was doing either. And I don't care what Martin says, it was dangerous.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Martin would have taken precautions. He wouldn't have let anything into the Archives we couldn't handle.

MELANIE  
No. He would have. Not deliberately. But when it comes to you... I don't think he thinks straight.

THE ARCHIVIST  
….

MELANIE

Go to bed, Archivist. We'll talk later.

[CLICK]


	5. supplemental material #3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> supplemental material, relating to a contract made between Martin Blackwood, former archival assistant, and Annabelle Cane, the current avatar of the Web

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings at the end.

[CLICK]

MARTIN  
You should really get some sleep you know. You barely existed a day ago.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I need to ...

MARTIN  
Whatever it is, it can wait till tomorrow.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I – You're right.

MARTIN  
I'll try not to make a habit of it.

[ _a squeak of a chair as he stands_ ] I'm set up in the overflow room, I'll let you...

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _interrupting incredibly awkwardly. completely the opposite of smooth._ ] You could – er. That is, you don't have to – you could stay. If you wanted.

MARTIN  
There's not room for more in here, it's a squeeze enough. And that one's Basira's, she'd kick me out in the middle of the night, knowing her....

THE ARCHIVIST  
I didn't mean...

MARTIN  
…. and I'm not a student any more, don't think my back could take a night on the floor...

THE ARCHIVIST  
I. I _meant._ [ _huffing a nervous sound_ ] I was just thinking. You could – er. Stay. W-with me. In my – if that's, if that's something you might, er, be interested in.

MARTIN  
[ _slightly higher pitched_ ] That's... kind, Jon, really is, but I don't think it's a good idea.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Oh. Right. My – er – my mistake. I misunderstood your... Um, sorry if I...

MARTIN  
I mean, I would... yeah, course I would be interested – but you don't. Don't know what you're asking. I don't want – I'm not going to lie to you, or make you uncomfortable, but I don't think – I can't, not together, not when it – it means a different thing to you than it-it does to me.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _understanding, an aggrieved sound_ ] _Martin_ , you're... Make me uncomfortable? You think...

[ _stronger, a steadying pause_ ] I know. I know exactly what I'm asking. I wish I could have, well, timed this better, or I had said something sooner but... [ _tired sound_ ] It's like you said. I barely existed yesterday. And that puts a lot of things into perspective. I don't know the whole story and if you don't want me to ask, I won't. But I know – what you did, and I can never thank you for it –

MARTIN  
I don't – You can't be... be offering this as a sort of, _Jesus_ , Jon, some sort of gratitude thing because if you think that's what I want, you're a bloody –

THE ARCHIVIST  
I'm not! No! I'm.... I'm asking... Christ, I didn't mean it like that.

MARTIN  
Then what do you mean?

THE ARCHIVIST  
I meant... I mean, I'm asking... Christ, why is this so difficult? I'm...

I- I want you, Martin. Here. With me. In the way I've wanted for – well, for a while now. And I know I'm not the.... let's face it, you could _definitely_ do better, but I'm – er – asking you. To stay with me. Tonight. And well, hopefully, every night. If you want to stay.

MARTIN  
… I – er, really?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Really.

MARTIN  
I – um – y-yes. Yes! I – I mean this is – that's... that's wicked! – so, you want... I'm uh, I'm just...Oh, bloody hell. Sorry. I-I'm not great with words.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[teasing, soft] Says the poet.

MARTIN  
You – You really want this? With me?

…  
  
THE ARCHIVIST

[ _subdued, painfully honest_ ] I'm not good with words either. But you, you were the last memory the Lonely tried to claw from me. And it was so cold and so bright and there was so much _nothing_ but I – I held on so tightly. It had b-bled, o-or chewed up everything in my head, years lost, a lifetime stolen from me, a-and I didn't know my name or why I was there, or what was happening, but I held on to my memories of you. Even when it shredded up what you looked like, how you looked at me, what your voice sounded like.... I-I grabbed onto your name because I knew I couldn't bear to lose that too.

MARTIN  
Jon...

THE ARCHIVIST  
I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I know we technically won today, but that it's not... things aren't going to get better. But I know I want you with me.

MARTIN  
[ _slightly damp, overcome_ ] I – er, you probably know how I feel. A-about, well, you.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Yeah.

MARTIN  
… creepy Eye powers?

THE ARCHIVIST  
It wasn't... I didn't mean to –

MARTIN  
I know. It's OK.

THE ARCHIVIST  
…

Come to bed, Martin?

MARTIN  
[ _a noticeably higher pitched sound that he tries and fails to cover with a cough_ ] I thought... You don't go in for that sort of thing, right...?

THE ARCHIVIST  
What...? Ah, no, no, you're right, I don't – but, I meant, you know, sleep sleep.

MARTIN  
[ _relieved_ ] Oh. That's good. Because I am, I am proper shattered. And also, you know, I haven't exactly dressed to impress recently, so my boxers are a bit – the elastic's going and they're slightly holey – nothing bad, just been meaning to buy some new ones, and I'd rather you didn't think I was the sort of person who goes around with holes in their clothes -

THE ARCHIVIST  
You're rambling, Martin.

MARTIN  
Um. Yeah. I am, a bit.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _fondly, repeating the same words but quieter_ ] Come to bed?

MARTIN  
Yes. Right. I'll just – get changed – I should get some pyjamas on, should I, yeah, I should. Y-you don't want shoes on the bed right, that would be....

THE ARCHIVIST  
_Martin._

MARTIN  
How are you so calm about this?

THE ARCHIVIST  
I – I'm really not. I've just been too tired for too long. And I'm – I'm tired now, and I want someone here so I'm not alone again, and I – I really want that someone to be you.

...

Just shove your shoes and jeans over there with mine. We'll sort it in the morning.

MARTIN  
[ _slightly throaty_ ] Er, sure. Yeah. Sure.

[ _scraping sound of weight on springs, swish of a blanket being moved_ ]

You've got enough – ?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Er, if you just, yeah..

MARTIN  
Move your... there we go.

…

[ _the creaking stops_ ]

Are you... is this OK?

THE ARCHIVIST  
It's. It's good. It's nice.

MARTIN  
I don't mean this. This is, course it's great, it's... it's _really_ great, but... Jon, you don't know what I did. To – to get you out.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Does it matter?

MARTIN  
It might.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Then tell me. If you want.

MARTIN  
I don't – you're tired, and I should really...

THE ARCHIVIST  
I won't make you tell me. Not if you don't want to. But I'll listen to whatever it is.

MARTIN  
To my statement.

THE ARCHIVIST  
No. This isn't... this isn't your interrogation, or admission of guilt, or I don't know, your confession. It's only... Whatever it is, I don't want you to have to do this on your own. We've had... we've had a long history of not talking when we should have. A-and I want to talk to you.

MARTIN  
I don't know where to even start.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I can. You know. Ask you. If it will help.

MARTIN  
And by ask, you mean?

THE ARCHIVIST  
_Ask_ ask.

MARTIN  
Spooky ask.

THE ARCHIVIST  
If I must call it that.

MARTIN  
No. Not because – I do trust you. But I want... I want to be able to lie. Not that I will, but I want – if you ask me – you know, _Ask_ ask me – then I will tell you everything in an incredibly ordered, structured way. No omissions. Every detail. And it's not that I'm, I'm not embarrassed about what I did, but I want to be able to choose my own words. Tell you as much as I can bear to. If that makes sense.

THE ARCHIVIST  
It does.

[ _shift of the bed springs_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _deep exhale_ ] Right. Er. Gimme a sec.

...

It's easier here, in the dark. To talk about it. Loads of big conversations, always happen n the dark don't they? Late at night, the wind-down of a party, or when the bars are tipping out and you're wandering home with your footwork weaving. Haven't been out for ages. For, I dunno, just a drink. I used to go with some of the guys upstairs before I became archival assistant. Some pints at _The Founders Arms_ round the corner, try and snag the pool table when it got free. I got pretty good at it. Nothing wild, but it... it was nice. To be away from here for a bit.

…

[ _more serious_ ] You were, gone. Taken. That's not a – I'm not blaming you. But Peter Lukas had taken you, and he knew I couldn't do a damn thing to stop him. I needed help. And Basira and Daisy and Melanie, it's not like – they couldn't... even if they had trusted me, they wouldn't be able to do anything either. And if Helen was around, I didn't know how to find them, how much they could stand up to the Lonely. So my first thought was, you know, the only other whatever-they-ares who haven't tried to kill you recently. The list is, huh, it's suspiciously short. I w-watched him smother you with fog and banish to that desolate vacant, and I – I grabbed as many files as I could fit into my bag, and I ran to go to find Aziraphale and Crowley.

I don't think, I never got to tell you that I went round to the bookshop a few times. While you were in your weird coma thingy. I wasn't... I wasn't in a good place, with you and Tim and my mum passing. And it wasn't a regular... I didn't go all the time, just a couple of visits. And it was – it couldn't make it better or bring you back - but it was nice, you know. To have someone to talk to about everything, to say things I didn't have the energy to bottle up any more. It was usually Aziraphale that answered. I'd go later, and the shop was always closed and there were never any customers, but he'd open the door with this churlish, pissed off-look on his face, hah, like I'd personally disturbed his well-earned rest. And then he saw me, and his posture would soften, and he'd say, oh, you know how he is, something like 'oh my dear boy, come in' or 'goodness, you simply must come inside'. And he'd make tea and sit me down, and we'd just talk.

Sometimes I didn't have the words for things, and even then, he'd nod as though he'd read them from me already, and that – it should have been invasive right, talking to someone who can Know what's in your head anyway, but it wasn't. I didn't always have the words, and sometimes I'd, you know, have a bit of a cry, and he was – he was so good about it. So human about it. Gave me a tissue and didn't know what to do with himself, but eventually gave me a hug and patted my back. And when I was done, he'd pretend not to see that I looked an absolute wreck, and he told me that things would be OK. Maybe not that day or the next, but that they would in time. And he didn't know what was going to happen tomorrow any more than any of us, but the lie was comforting, so I tried to believe him. He'd send me home with some cake Crowley had made, or I'd fall asleep on the sofa and there'd be a blanket over me the next morning, that and a killer pain in the neck from the angle I'd slept at.

And then, everything all got a bit worse, didn't it? We stopped being able to leave the Archives, the Flesh attacked, and then Peter came to me and said that he could make it all go away, that he needed an assistant to help him with his work, that he'd keep the Archives, keep you safe, and all I had to do was... Jon, you have to believe me, if – if there'd been any other choice.

THE ARCHIVIST  
You don't need to apologise. We've all, we've all had to make decisions.

MARTIN  
[ _unsettled sound_ ] Yeah.

…

And then, Peter did what he did, and I tried to get help. Only Peter had got the Fairchilds on side to grab Aziraphale, and then when I got there, the bookshop was burning, and Crowley wasn't... understandably, well, wasn't doing great. Neither was I, really, but one of us needed to.... Anyway, there wasn't exactly a queue of people lining up to help. Most of the other powers, they're hostile to the Eye, or indifferent at best. And of Beholding's so-called allies, we couldn't exactly ask the Lonely, could we? So the choice, it w-was basically down to one.

THE ARCHIVIST  
You went to try and find the Web, didn't you?

MARTIN  
Yeah. Lots of research and looking a-and _everywhere_ was dead ends, we didn't know if you'd been devoured already or even where Aziraphale was. Then after a long time, I – well, um, you see – there was a s-spider. In my flat. A-and ha, long story short, Annabelle Cane came to visit.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _intake_ ] Martin –

MARTIN  
I... There's a tape. Of the meeting. Somewhere. She said I could... I could keep the recorder running as we spoke. Gesture of goodwill. As an physical record of our negotiations. Contract.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _starts to say something_ ]

MARTIN  
[ _fraught, not desperate but toeing the line of it_ ] No. Don't, Jon, just – Please. I know you'll listen to that tape eventually, but I want to, I need to be the one to tell you. I want you to hear it from me, to understand why. Please.

THE ARCHIVIST  
….

I won't – I promise I won't interrupt. But, Martin, you know if you, if you tell me I'll – I won't be able to help it, and I don't want to –

MARTIN  
I don't think you can. Do your weird feeding from my dreams thing. Not any more. Not if I don't want you to.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _a long pause, then a fractured sigh_ ]

…

What happened to you?

MARTIN  
OK. Yeah. Stay on topic, right. So, as I was saying, Annabelle Cane knocked on my door. I was – I was expecting it, really, only a matter of time. I answered the door, and my legs, god, I thought they were going to go out from under me, and my hands were sweaty and I couldn't undo the chain lock with how much they were shaking, but eventually I managed to open the door and let her in.

She – you've never met her, have you? The statements don't do her justice. There's the... she gives off this impression of space, density. I mean, I'm tall, but she's – physically about my height, a bit over - but at the same time... When she walked through my front door, I couldn't shake the idea that she was having to fold herself to fit through the gap, and there was – she didn't move right, is what I'm saying. In this weird, leisurely flexing motion, one leg pushing out then swap. A slow scuttle. That hat was on her head, and the first thing she asked, after politely greeting me and asking if she could come inside, was if I wouldn't mind her taking it off, that it was impolite to some people, wasn't it, to wear hats indoors. I couldn't have mustered up words, so I nodded, and she slipped it off and – I'd remembered Darren Harlow's statement, but it's one thing to know about something and another to see it. I tried not to stare too much, I didn't want to come across as rude or anything, but she, well, obviously she noticed. She smiled at me with only her lips, and she said that I could look, if I wanted. That I liked spiders, didn't I?

I looked. Stared if I'm honest. At the matted mass of web that covered her impacted skull, and it was easier to stomach than I'd expected. Her thick hair covered the dip where the bone had caved in, and the webbing that criss-crossed the cavern that split her scalp had done its best to glue the sides together.

You'll laugh, but the – the first thing I managed to ask her, once my tongue had started working again was if she wanted a cup of tea. Daft, yeah I know. She said yes in that breathy wisp of a voice, kind of throaty, as though she'd damaged them somehow, and then without another words, she went into my living room. Complimented the space, looked around all my things, a-and it was so so _surreal_ , that I stammered out a thanks. She wasn't talking about my kitchen or the measly living room that offshoots from it in an open plan, two-for-one sort of way. She was marvelling with a – a nurturing look maybe at the web that had overgrown like a briar bush to set up roots over my ceiling, to tangle down to the door of my washing machine. I – er, god, I forgot to mention that earlier, damn right, OK, there was a massive spider web in my kitchen, right, left there by like a spider the size of Shelob or something, and in the middle, twitching a bit, like someone caught in a dream, those little jumpy muscle spasms, there was an egg sac. Like a blob of candyfloss, but, well. Bigger.

She ran a long finger over the puffy skin of the sac, and then she turned back to me, and took my hand. I started a bit, but she held tightly, and she took a long look at my hand. I got bitten by a – like a centipede thing before, and the – it wasn't bad. She said very quietly, mostly to herself, that she'd wondered if Corruption would get anxious, try and disrupt her plans. That the bite could have easily turned nasty, festered something dreadful. That it was good of me to protect my former house-guest from one of their crawlers. That that was what had decided this for her. She didn't elaborate, and I didn't... I didn't have the question in place to ask further.

Crowley arrived then. Nervous, like he'd ran up all the stairs to my flat. He was the most – he was very human then. I think it might have been a defensive thing. His suit rumpled, a faint sheen of sweat on his brow. He gave a nod to Annabelle Cane when he saw her, tensing up immediately, put on an incredibly insincere smile as he greeted her, his voice only slightly shaking. He kept looking at me, little twitches of his eye flicking over me. Making sure she hadn't done anything to me.

I made the tea, and found a spare chair from my bedroom, and then we sat down, and we talked.

For a while, she stirred sugar into her tea and didn't speak. I nearly spilled my tea when I tried to pick it up, what with the trembling. Finally, she stared at me, in that way where someone gives you their entire attention, a-and it makes you squirm, discomforted by the weight of their observation, and I couldn't... I couldn't meet her gaze. She didn't look at things like other people. She stared for a long time, like she forgot how to blink, and then when she remembered, it was too – too slow, like, you know when you're dropping off to sleep.

She asked me what we wanted so badly that we'd thought to seek out the Web's avatar. She knew. Course she did, she just wanted to hear me say it. So while Crowley fidgeted, and didn't touch his tea and fisted his grip in the fabric of his trouser-leg, I told her. About the Lonely, about what Peter had done, how we needed help, to get you out, to find Aziraphale. She glanced at Crowley here, and tsked, slightly patronising, said that Crowley had already found out where the sightless little eye was. Crowley twitched and a muscle jumped in his jaw, but he nodded with a stiff gesture. She prompted him with a delighted sliver of light in her eye, and Crowley – he didn't meet my eye when he clenched his teeth and told me Aziraphale was in the Buried. I dunno how he knew, when he'd found out – but from the look on his face, it wasn't really the best question to ask.

Annabelle Cane sipped her tea and watched Crowley for a moment more, before she smiled in that tight, toothless way, and said that it was unlikely we'd find the Archivist or the sightless eye in one piece. That you'd have been eaten or crushed or both, that what was left would be gristle, a husk that might have once been a person. That she didn't see why she should get involved.

I tried to – I mean, I remember trying to remind her that the Web and Eye were allies, that surely countering Lukas would be a benefit to her. She tilted her head a little, b-but the bones in her neck slid wrong. She agreed in that low, wispy voice of hers that the Web had no love for the Lonely. The cold fog slowing down the steps of her children, killing them with the chill, that the Web had held a foothold in the Archives long before the interloper Lukas had sought to interfere.

Crowley interrupted then, stressing with an urgent voice that surely it was in both our and her interest to see Lukas gone, but she gave a dismissive hum in the back of her throat, a weird _grating_ sort of sound, and said that Lukas' fumblings might be aiding the Web in the long term, who were we to stay. That the loss was disagreeable, but not such a tragedy. That there would be other Archivists, that most humans, much like spiders, lived such short fleeting lives, that the world wouldn't' count the loss of an unimportant eye as a loss, no matter what human-suit he wore – Crowley tried not to flinch at that, but she watched him so closely as she said it, smiling with an inexplicable look, and when she saw the weakness slip through, she – she mocked him for the reaction with a cruel hiss, for his weakness. She turned back to me, t-turning that horrible stare onto me, and she continued, saying casually that another Archivist would be found eventually .That there was a time when Elias had been preparing – would have h-had me be the Archivist if things had turned out differently, if I hadn't ousted the Watcher from his post. That manoeuvring me into position had been the work of years, that the Web would have had such a hold in the heart of the Eye's power if I'd not disrupted the plan.

She sounded, I don't know if it's what she meant, but she sounded scolding. Accusatory in that long-suffering way, like I was a-a child who'd disappointed their parents yet again. I – I wasn't angry, but stung, really, at that needling flatly let-down tone, that suggested that _I'd_ been to blame somehow, s-so I interrupted her.

I remember saying that Elias was a murderer, that he'd bullied and threatened and killed and she expected me to have what – let him continue, but I stopped when – She made another strange sound in the back of her throat, and parts of her seemed to – _stretch_ isn't exactly the right... she enlarged, in a way. Her shadow fattened out with mass, sinewy, a towering height to it. She asked me – and her voice was softer now, but that was somehow worse, a creeping gentle patience like a strung bow – how many of her children I'd scooped up and put outside into the cold. How many I'd inadvertently killed, unknowingly or not, signing their death sentence to the freezing. She raised the corners of her mouth, and her – her eyes were _more_ , and she asked me if I was so concerned with ethics, how I justified what I'd done. My deal with Forsaken, the ties I'd severed willingly, the people I'd betrayed, what I'd... what I'd allowed him to do to you.

Crowley tried to defend me, but she said something to him that my ears couldn't understand, and he went quiet. He put a hand on my arm, like he wanted to be able to push me back. His hands felt rougher than usual. Scratchy and prickling. I didn't look. I don't think he would have liked me to draw attention to his slip.

I could hear the egg sac behind us. Not... not rustling exactly, but – it's hard to describe it. Like a settling of sorts. When you've got, I dunno, a box of Coco Pops or Rice Krispies or whatever, and you're putting it back in the cupboard, and the cereal inside shifts from the movement.

Annabelle Cane took a small drink from her tea, and then asked me, casually, ever so lightly like she was barely interested, asking for politeness' sake, what I would offer in exchange for your freedom. I didn't – didn't know what to say, and then Crowley was arguing that I didn't have to do anything, that he and Annabelle could come to an understanding, that I didn't have to be involved.

She stood up. There was no muscle movement, sitting one moment and standing the next. She was taller than both of us, but I couldn't see, for a moment,  what was different about her to have given her the extra height. Her legs... her toes brushed the floor, like she-she was dangling, like something else was holding her faintly swaying body up.

She stared at Crowley, made a gesture with limbs that weren't fingers, and it... it shut up his mouth. It looked like she'd... she'd melted his lips together. A webbed mass of skin where lips would be, like raised scar tissue. Her voice went very low, and it itched when she spoke. A scratching at the back of my head, the sensation of nails, scratch, scratch, scratch, wearing away a layer of skin, leaving slowly gouged rents.

She explained very quietly that he shouldn't test her patience. That the Mother of Puppets knew what he was doing. That he'd thought he was so clever, scuttling around London, playing human with the sightless eye. That he had forgotten hadn't he, that he was one of theirs. She stared for longer, and the scar tissue crept like rot across the bottom of his face, overtaking his cheeks, his chin. She looked at him with such an odd expression. Indulgently. Like a favoured nephew who has been acting out, humoured by a doting aunt. But it wasn't kind. There was no familial affection there, it was... it was possession, or ownership, o-or something.

She said that his insubordinations were humoured because he'd been doing so well, binding one of the eyes to him so easily. He hadn't even thought it was manipulation, had he, he'd probably chalked it up to something like love or companionship or trust. She leaned forward and said that that's what all those words boiled down to. Controlling someone else. Trapping them. That it wasn't his fault, it was just his nature. She asked if he could ever be sure that he was loved, really loved by another, or if he'd just woven a web around the eye in the same way he always did, made his fantasy a reality. She said the Mother was proud of him, that soon, their plans for him and the sightless eye would come clear, all in good time, and then he'd prove himself to them.

She paused, and the thick bands of scarring tightened. Like a clenched grip. Her eyes were darker now. She warned that they didn't need either him or the eye in one piece in order for their plans to come to fruition. So this was his only warning to not interfere, to let her plans unfold as they were meant to. Crowley's eyes were hard with something like rage or fear or both. He'd stopped pretending to have the right number.

And then I was – I was standing. Crowley made a sound, but he didn't or couldn't move to grab me. My arms snapped to my sides, my spine painfully straight, my legs moving, unsteadily, tottering and I wasn't able to, I couldn't stop myself. I moved jerkily forward, a marionette, a heady terror building in my head as I was puppeted to stand in front of her.

Annabelle Cane gazed over me, and asked me if I'd pledge my loyalty. If I'd give myself to the Web. She hummed with thought, and said they could take me anyway she supposed, willingly or otherwise, that that had been the original plan. That the Mother of Puppets could lay her children in the ripped gaps between my bones, that it was be a fair exchange for the return of an Archivist, that my fear would be stinking and potent and acrid with terror as her children hatched and tore sustenance from me. That I would be able to feel every patch of flesh melted and devoured to feed new life. I'm not – I'm not going to lie, but if she hadn't been holding my throat shut, my body locked and f-frozen , I would have done – done something, run, or screamed or-or something.

She arched over me and there were, there were more arms than she'd had before, limber and bristled and curved like the bars of a bird cage, long and towering and surrounding me completely. She put a long fingered hand over my stomach – Crowley made a sharp, panicked sound, but I couldn't turn my head, couldn't move at all, and her – her limbs around me enfolded closer.

She continued mildly, her hand chill through the fabric of my t-shirt, started talking out loud about how it might be if they gave me the mantle of an avatar. She crooned and said they'd watched me for so long, that they'd been so proud of my progress, that I was theirs, had been theirs for so long, that with them, I could be so much more. It was, so so like what Peter said later, the same beats, the same implication that my life... my life has never been mine to live, that there's always been some shadowed thing that wants to use or have or take me. And – and I don't know how true that is. I still don't.

She mused that my fragile human body could be transformed so easily, that I might even enjoy it, stretched misshapen, bloating and hardening until I didn't – I couldn't pretend to be human any more. She said t-that m-my Archivist.... [ _faltering_ ] that you would look on me w-with such – such horror and fear and disgust, but that I'd know it had been for the best, wouldn't I, that the exchange had been fair, that I'd saved you, even if you hated what I'd become in order to do it.

[ _a broken shaky breath_ ]

A-and then she, she said I could – [ _pained_ ] god, I wouldn't, Jon, I'd never, and she kept talking, saying such _horrible_ –

– she said that I could change your mind. That I could _make_ you like what I'd become, _make_ you l-love me the way I'd always wanted, and wouldn't I like that, a little gift for my allegiances. That all I – all I had to do was tell you how you felt about me, convince you, that sure, you could, potentially, compel the truth from me but that you wouldn't even think to because you wouldn't be able to doubt me, wouldn't' be able to question what I told you. That it would be OK, that it wouldn't be _wrong_ , because it would be such a little lie, wouldn't it, such a little web to trap you in. I'd know that I could make you happy, that you'd – you'd want me, that it was better for everyone if you were made to believe it. And then, wouldn't that be nice, something I'd always wanted, someone I knew would love me completely, wouldn't leave me or lie to me, who _couldn't_ do those things, didn't I deserve such a present after everything I'd done for you.

She stopped when she saw the emotion she wanted on my face, smiled pointed and sharp and delighted. I don't know why she taunted me like that. To get a rise maybe or, to make my skin itch, or... I don't know. I think she liked the sick fear it grew in me, the quaking revulsion of the idea. After a moment, she had got what she wanted, because she took a small step back, moving her hand back down. The feeling came back to my arms and I gave a wet gasp.

She admitted ever so quietly, as though she was letting me into her confidence, that plans had changed. That the Web didn't want me as a sacrifice, or an avatar. That they wanted my humanity. That in time I could weave such webs, but as it was, I had the trust of the Archivist, the faint hold of the Eye, the touch of the Lonely. That I was perfectly placed to be a caretaker, that she'd watched as I unknowingly challenged Corruption for the defensive of one of her children, and knew I'd be perfect for it.

She must have unfused Crowley's mouth because behind me, he lowly asked what she meant. Annabelle Cane continued as though he hadn't spoken, just kept – kept looking at me, my own face frozen back on me, like one of those vanity mirrors, a curved distortion to each frightened face.

A life of caring for others, wasn't that what I'd always done, she asked. That I couldn't help it, could I, that it made me feel valued, like I was worth something. A life of others feeding from what I gave so easily and willingly, stripping things from me for their survival or for their selfish comfort, hollowing me out, and me, just giving and giving and giving. That this time, I could have the choice. She pointed at the egg sac. You protected the mother from the Corruption, she said. And now the children were stretching out, cramped and ready to be born, to become more. That that was was the Web wanted from me, had always wanted for me. For me to become more.

She asked me if that was the price I would pay.

And I knew what she meant. I don't – she might have put the idea in my head, but I knew what was going to happen. What I was agreeing to.

Crowley said my name behind me. Low and weak and scared. I don't know if it was a warning, or if he was telling me not to.

I looked at Annabelle Cane and saw my face reflected in the slick black mirrors of all of her eyes, and I said yes.

She smiled, and that time she showed all of her teeth.

With one of her legs, or limbs o-or whatever, she took the egg sac down from the centre of the web like she was picking fruit. It seemed, weirdly weightless, you know, like a cotton ball, feathery. The edges of it squirmed, flexed, agitated by the jostling.

And then she held it out to me.

You don't have to watch this, weaver, she said to Crowley.

He'll need someone. For after. I think that's what he said. I wasn't really listening. I held my hands out like when you have to take communion, and she balanced it in my hand.

It was light. So light, like holding a crumpled ball of paper. Cupped in my palms. The movement seemed to grow more eager, more excitable. The sides of the cotton ball shuddered, and the insides pushed out with a pulsing motion, little jolt-like kicks. It writhed and squirmed with a weird happy delight and I could – I knew that, how happy they were to be born, to know me. I don't know how long I stood. Staring, cupping it in my hands like a flame I thought would go out. I breathed when it stretched out, following its irregular motions.

And then it split like a water balloon.

I've told you, I know I have, I sued to love spiders when I was a kid. I got a book out of the library – it was the first book I got out with my library card, I'd forged my mum's signature and I was – I was really nervous that I'd be found out, but you know, looking back, I think the librarian knew and looked the other way. A nice guy. And the book, god I loved it, I took it out dozens of time. It was called something like The Big Book of Super Spiders. It was huge, big hardback thing like one of those Guinness World record books, could barely fit it in my scrappy old backpack, but I used to spend hours looking at all the pictures, learning all the facts, repeating them to myself quietly so I could remember. My – well, my parents were never much interested when I tried to tell them what I remembered, but they didn't stop me reading it. Mind, Dad wasn't much happy when I started going out into the garden to try and catch some, bringing them inside. Made me tip them all out. Mum bought me a book once, for my birthday. Still in the bag, price tag on, but I was so surprised that it wasn't like, clothes or something, that I didn't mind. It was on insects, and I didn't tell her that spiders weren't insects, just said thanks. I did a bit of reading on bees and moths and millipedes to show her I liked the book, then went back to my spider book.

I don't... it's hard to say if they were always going to get us, isn't it Jon? If there was something about us as people that, I don't know, drew us to the powers, to being here, or if we were moulded that way, nudged along to follow the paths they wanted. Suppose it doesn't matter does it. End result's the same.

So, while I was holding the egg sac, I was thinking about what happens, when spiderlings are born. Sounds kind of cute, right, spiderlings. They're tiny, like the size of those silver ball bearings you get on cakes, sometimes even smaller. Sometimes they're born independent, and just wander off, do their own thing by instinct. Sometimes they hang out with the mother for a bit, acclimatising to the world. They sit on, well, what we'd call her back, and she carries them around, and they eat what she catches and prepares for them. And, as most people know, sometimes they – they eat the mother. Her final act of parenthood.

There were thousands. Spilling onto my hands like the white of ocean waves, through the gaps in my fingers, a pop as the sac opened like a mouth and they poured out. Sloshing out in a writhing, blanketing mass over my wrists, up my arms. It was deadly silent. The spiders, they didn't make any noise. Normal spiders, they don't really. They can hiss, but that's only when they're frightened, and it's not exactly through their mouths because they don't really have those, not like us. They kind of rub their body parts together really fast to make the sound. Like grasshoppers. Some spiders can purr I guess, but that's more a soft vibration and only when they want to say hello to lady spiders. Anyway. I didn't – uh, I didn't have to hear them. I felt them, the sick weight of their numbers, their legs feeling up the skin and hairs of arms, newborn bodies exploring the space, falling over each other with the amount of them, rickety and roiling in their movements, scattering like dropped marbles, lumbering and crawling up my arms.

I didn't make a sound. I _couldn't,_ I just – their little wriggling bodies moved up to my inner elbows and I was _covered_ and I think I made a whimpering noise as they burrowed under my sleeves, a-and then they expanded out, growing bold, over my chest, pattering legs inching further and further, up over the skin of my throat, my cheek.... I... there was tears rolling down my cheeks, and they wandered through them, dragged the slick damp over the rest of my face.

[ _croaky_ ] I don't know when I felt it. Maybe they'd already bitten me, and it took me that long to notice in my terror. There was a... a flaring pain that started in my wrists. I hissed, or flinched, or – I don't know what I did, but I stepped back and that disrupted some of them in their climb momentarily. I felt the swelling starting up. And then a – a pin-prick over my skin, sat at the junction where my jaws sloped down to my neck. Then at the dip of my throat. The dimple on my cheek. I was... I had the worst images of them swarming in their slow, meandering way into my ears, my nose, into my mouth and down my throat like they did to Carlos Vittery, that I'd feel their curious legs stepped lightly over my eyes. But they didn't. They just moved until I was carpeted in scuttling bodies, behind my ears, on my scalp, and the pin-pricks were getting worse, and it was – it started burning, a thumping rising pain. My skin got hot and tight, swelling fat and painful and I staggered and cried out from one of them bit into my heel, the skin of my top lip, my eye lid.

Time got funny then. At some point I fell. I remember lying on the floor, my skin too close to me, warm, just, horrendously warm, like I was sunburnt all over, my heartbeat thundering madly and the skin around my eyes was swollen and I – everything was blurry and I burned. I don't know if I made any noises. If they're on the tape then, I'm sorry you have to hear them. I didn't regret what I'd done or call out for Crowley or wish I'd told you what I should have said years ago – there wasn't room for those things, so I sobbed without a mouth and rocked and burned. My skin all ran together, my fingers indistinct, my eyes fused shut. My body tightening and hardening like a carapace. I wanted to push out as it pressed in on me, and it was dark and my skin cracked like crunched leaves as I struggled, and my heartbeat was all I could hear and it had picked up a double, an echo so it was a thundering wave of sound that swallowed me up and there was nothing else, nothing but the tightening dark.

My own skin closed vice like around me, and whatever was left inside was all formed wrong, boneless and sloshing and wound up, and after a while I blinked with all my eyes and it was still dark, and I tried to stretch out with my melting, fusing limbs, but I wasn't.... I couldn't – This is [ _swallowing_ ] this is why I didn't want you to ask me, Jon. Because I'm trying to put it into words, but I'm also – if I had to relive this, as it was, every shredding moment, I don't think I'd....

….

I lay on my back for a long time, being remade.

The spiders had gone. They'd fed from what they wanted, and had spilled off to cracks and corners elsewhere. I think while I was willing to have a mouth to scream, Annabelle Cane left too.

Crowley was there, though I couldn't see him. Barely heard him. Muffled like behind a door. I think he'd been speaking the whole time, to try and settle me, keep me company, I just hadn't the ears to listen.

The first words eventually resolved into meaning. He told me that I needed to push out, that I couldn't stay there. He was encouraging, despite the fear in his voice. It helped. Honestly. Not being alone. My body seized and clenched in on itself and painfully folded my limbs in, my motions growing sluggish and difficult, and god, I was tired, so so tired, but my skin was like... it was like wearing clothes that are two sizes too small, so I stretched, again and again, wanting to be _out_ , my lungs constricting with the pressure, and Crowley was there, telling me to keep going, that I was doing well, to push out again.

So I – I did. I was fighting, the – the confines of my body, I guess, stretching and stretching, and I kept on and on until my skin finally cracked, splitting like an overladen bin bag and I pushed out.

The air was agony. Painfully frozen on my skin, and I cried out then, with a throat that felt my own. A human sound, raw in my mouth, and I was dazed, punched into shock with the intensity of everything. The air a prickling sharp cold, the sound of Crowley talking, the darkening room.

It was a while before I could come back to myself.

Crowley gave me a towel from the bathroom cupboard, to – well, you know, cover myself. The cotton, it was scratchy and rough and uncomfortable, but I used it, shivering and trembling while he rifled through my drawers to find me some pyjamas to put on.

I tried to stand myself, but my legs collapsed quickly from under me and Crowley had to help get me on the sofa. I told him – the first thing I remember saying that made sense was that I hadn't been... changed. I looked down at my normal hands, the same number of limbs as normal, my skin the same colour as before, even the same constellations of freckles. That nothing was different.

He looked at me so – so sadly as he got me a glass of tepid water from the tap. His face was ashen, grave. He told me that he was so so sorry that there hadn't been another way.

I sat on the sofa while he got rid of my... my old skin. It was pretty disgusting. After a while, he told me shortly that Annabelle had agreed to help us with you and Aziraphale. Their one request was to restore Elias. That the Web had a vested interest in reinstalling him as the head of the Archive. That they would make the appropriate arrangements.

I – and then we went to the Archives. There's a lot I don't... I don't know. Crowley didn't go into a lot of detail about what he and Annabelle Cane had talked about. I think, but can't be sure that the Web helped bind Peter Lukas to something. An artefact, like they did with the... the thing that pretended to be Sasha. Crowley said something about how the Web wanted to keep Lukas in play, just bind him as a gesture of control over him, to keep him and his like out of the Archives. If Elias took any revenge for the attempt to kill you, I don't know what it was. A-and I don't really know how the Web helped Crowley access the Buried. He wouldn't tell me, said we didn't have the time to talk about it – and, well I haven't exactly seen him since he got out.

But it helped me find you. Peter banished me, and that was the plan. And then there was fog and nothing, suspended in a vacant space. But there wasn't nothing. All I could feel without the distraction of noise and motion and _being_ was twitching things at the edges of me. I held out my arms, and it was like – currents or something, my web spread wide and little lives jerking and twitching, caught and stuck on the lines of it. And then I felt you – in the distance, pulsing faintly like a dying light, and then I – I pulled on the sensation, dragged you closer and wrapped my arms around you and then Crowley was pulling on the web we'd knotted around my limbs that even Lukas couldn't see, to help guide me back, yanking us both free.

So. That's, that's it. What happened. I'm guessing, well you, ha, you know the rest, right, I don't need to... [ _a painful silence_ ] And if you're going to push me out of bed, o-or, I'd say break up with me, but it's not as if, I mean, we're not dating or anything – and I don't –course, I don't want you too, but I'd understand, I'd understand why you wouldn't want to...

[ _cuts off – the bed makes an 'eek' of movement_ ]

[ _soft, fragile_ ] Oh.

Jon?

THE ARCHIVIST  
….

[ _his voice muted, as though spoken against fabric_ ] You're  the bravest man I know, Martin.

MARTIN  
I'm not sure I'm – Exactly a man any more.

THE ARCHIVIST  
No. But I don't think either of us really are. I mean, if anyone's going to a worry here, I'm apparently going to herald a horrendous ritual of terror, so, I might one-up you a bit there. But that... that doesn't change the fact. I know you don't, well, you've never needed my validation, but regardless, I'm so – ahem. You're quite remarkable, Martin. Whatever you are.

MARTIN  
I'm one of them now. I'm different. I'll change. I-I'll want to. I don't think I'll be able to stop myself.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _quietly interrupting_ ] Not tonight. We'll worry about it tomorrow.

MARTIN  
You're not... worried I'm going to turn into a – I dunno, spider person in the middle of the night.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _dry_ ] Is this an urge you feel you have?

MARTIN  
I mean, well, no, not exactly, but...

THE ARCHIVIST  
Then I have no concerns about placing my safety in your capable hands.

I trust you.

MARTIN  
… Rare thing. Lot of pressure, to put on a man.

THE ARCHIVIST  
I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion admirably.

MARTIN  
… Is this... is this you flirting with me?

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _flustered_ ] I was, I was _trying_ to be sincere, I....

MARTIN  
[ _playful_ ] It's unexpected. Sweet. Just didn't think you were the type.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Oh be quiet. Sleep. Now.

MARTIN  
...Another one of those hugs going spare? Or are they rationed?

THE ARCHIVIST  
Please tell me this isn't your flirting technique.

MARTIN  
Not at all. You can get [ _an aborted yawn_ ] all the full Blackwood charm in the morning.

THE ARCHIVIST  
[ _deadpan, clearly teasing_ ] Charming are you?

[ _put upon sigh_ ] Oh, alright then.

[ _the bed creaks, the sound of fabric shushing fabric_ ]

[ _less volume, more tentative, muffled by the close space_ ] We'll deal with it. Whatever – whatever comes next.

MARTIN  
[ _another escaped yawn_ ] Tomorrow.

THE ARCHIVIST  
Tomorrow.

[CLICK]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for: graphic body horror, a boat-load of spiders (seriously, so so many), brief discussions of non-consensual mind control. 
> 
> What happened to Aziraphale and Crowley will be the focus of the next part of this series. This chapter unfortunately doesn't feature a lot of these two because I want to spend more time focusing on the impact these events have on them, and to – in some ways - close off this particular chapter of Jon and Martin's story. 
> 
> This was a beast of a thing, so I had to unfortunately cut some scenes for flow and pacing, including:  
> * Basira and Melanie trading notes on who is attractive on British daytime TV (Basira cancelled a date because it coincided with the Bake Off final where Nadiya won, Melanie likes Alex Jones' accent from the One Show).  
> * Martin and Jon bickering about how Jon hasn't been to a pub in years and exclusively drinks wine sodas
> 
> I also want it known that I watched SO many videos on moulting spiders, and that shit is goddamn horrific. 
> 
> If anyone wants to say hi (and express all their feelings about the last few episodes of TMA because MAN I HAVE A LOT OF EMOTIONS) I'm [bibliocratic](https://bibliocratic.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.


End file.
